UNICEF Launches Home Treatment Pack to Reduce HIV Transmission to Babies. 29/10/10
The pack is specially designed for women who are hardest to reach
29 October 2010
An estimated 22,000 newborn babies are infected each year with the HIV virus by their mothers in Kenya, according to the United Nations Children's Fund or UNICEF.
UNICEF says the high number HIV positive babies in the East African country was due to the fact that very few HIV positive pregnant women access treatment to prevent mother to child HIV transmission.
In a bid to reverse the trend, UNICEF has launched a new initiative to provide free of charge, a package that contains anti-retroviral drugs and antibiotics, which pregnant women can easily administer at home.
Marixie Mercado is from UNICEF in Geneva.
"The pack is specially designed for women who are hardest to reach and bundles all the necessary drugs for a full course of treatment. It is packaged and colour coded in such a way as to make it easy health workers to explain to women how to take the medicines at home."
UNICEF says without treatment, around half of all children born with HIV will die before their second birthday. The initiative will also be extended to Cameroon, Lesotho and Zambia.