HIV mothers may not infect their babies: Expert
HIV mothers may not infect their babies: Expert
JAKARTA (JP): Not all the babies of women infected with the
Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) will be infected with the
virus which causes AIDS, a senior doctor said yesterday.
"Those babies have a 15 to 40 percent risk of contracting the
virus," said Samsuridjal Djauzi, a medical advisor at the Pelita
Ilmu Foundation on Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).
He said babies may become infected during pregnancy, delivery
or breast-feeding.
"Most of the babies become infected during delivery because
they have direct contact with their mothers' blood or amniotic
fluid," Samsuridjal told The Jakarta Post yesterday.
Breast-feeding also increases the risk of infection, though it
is not as great as that of the delivery process, he said.
He said that in some African countries, more babies of poor
mothers with HIV died of malnutrition than of HIV infection.
"It's better for HIV mothers to feed their babies with milk
substitutes than to breast-feed them, so that the risk is
reduced," he said.
Health authorities here have recorded that five babies have
been born from women with HIV. One of them, a healthy baby boy,
was born at the Sanglah hospital in Denpasar, Bali, on Aug. 31.
Tuti Parwati Merati, the head of the AIDS prevention center at
the hospital, said the baby was in a good condition. The hospital
is yet to ascertain whether the baby is infected with HIV.
A blood test for HIV is normally conducted after a baby is 18-
months old or more, Tuti said.
The other babies were from Bojonegoro and Malang in East Java,
from Jayapura, Irian Jaya, and Jakarta. There are no reports on
whether the babies are infected.
Samsuridjal cited a number of foreign surveys which have found
that medical treatment could help reduce the risk of babies
contracting HIV from their mothers.
"Treatment with a drug called AZT can help reduce the risk of
mothers infecting their infants by up to 8 percent," he said.
Samsuridjal said it was difficult to conduct similar studies
on babies in Indonesia because there were so few infected babies.
The doctor said that babies infected with HIV may die sooner
than HIV-positive adults.
"Adults develop AIDS about five to ten years after they have
been infected with HIV, but babies can develop AIDS within a
year," he said.
"There was a baby who died six months after contracting the
virus," Samsuridjal said. He did not say if the baby who died was
one of the five infected Indonesian babies.
He suggested that women should be given more information on
AIDS, in particular on medical treatment to lower the risk of HIV
infection for their babies.
In July, the Ministry of Health reported that 420 people
across the country were infected with HIV. Some of these are AIDS
carriers. The number of infected people had risen 13 since June.
(31/23)