A new study shows that only about 50 per cent of the babies born to ladies infected by the HIV receive the HIV prevention drug nevirapine in African countries. Researchers conducted their study by visiting mother-infant pairs treated at clinics in Cameroon, Ivory Coast, South Africa and Zambia. They discovered that only 50 per cent of HIV-exposed infants received the minimal dose of nevirapine. The study also found that many HIV-positive women who were prescribed nevirapine before giving birth showed no sign of the drug in samples of their umbilical cord blood.
"What this study shows us is that there are programmatic failures and common problems that occur along the path to mother-to-child transmission prevention," including patients failing to take medications and inadequacies in HIV testing, study author Dr. Elizabeth Stringer, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, explained in a university news release. "We know that true mother-to-child transmission prevention begins with HIV testing, with finding those who are infected and getting them into a program helps them adhere to the single-dose nevirapine and other care guidelines," she added.
The study comes in backdrop of report that a gel having Gilead Sciences Inc.’s GILDO.O AIDS drug tenofovir reduced HIV infections in women by at least 39 per cent over two and a half years. The results suggest that it’s now feasible to slow the spread of STD by giving women an option to protect themselves, Dr. Salim Abdool Karim at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa said in results to be released on Tuesday at the International AIDS Conference in Vienna.
For decades, researchers have been attempting to develop formulate a microbicide -- a gel, cream, ring or tablet that could be inserted into the vagina or rectum before intercourse in a bid to prevent transmission of virus that leads AIDS. The previous attempts had failed to deliver positive results. "Boy, have we been doing the happy dance," Karim told Reuters in a telephone interview.
