The Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission (PMTCT) unit of Family Health Division (FHD) of the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare (MOHSW) reported a decline in the number of HIV infections among babies born from HIV pregnant mothers.

Presenting the PMTCT group impact and achievement at the R7 Sub Recipient meeting for grant renewal held in Mohale’s hoek on February 2 to 4, 2010, the head of PMTCT Mrs. Malisebo Mphale mentioned that babies born from HIV positive pregnant mothers who received nevirapine have high chance of being free from the deadly virus.

After birth during the course of their lives, the Ministry of Health through central laboratory takes the blood samples of all children born from HIV mothers through DNA PCR whereby all specimen are taken to Republic of South Africa for testing.

The results revealed that in 2008 out of the babies tested 22% were found infected, in 2007 out of all tested babies 19% were positive, while in 2008 only 11% had HIV. Meanwhile the 2009 data is yet to be analyzed. Meanwhile the full report on PMTCT analysis to be published and disseminated later.

Among the reasons contribute to the transmission of infection from mothers to babies are; some pregnant mothers do not visit health clinic during their pregnancy and also have birth at home, other do not take babies to clinic for regular check-ups after birth while other mothers do not adhere to exclusive breastfeeding.

However, despite of the challenges of individual mothers, the overall impact is remarkable as babies born from HIV positive mothers are now free from the deadly virus and grow up healthy like any other babies.

Caption: The baby born from HIV positive mothers are now healthy and free from HIV virus

The Family Health Division attributed these success to the Global Fund R7 HIV grant that was used to recruit 18 PMTCT professional counselors in all CHAL and Government hospitals and also recruited 30 community counselors in five districts of Thaba Tseka, Leribe, Maseru and Mafeteng to provide counseling and encourage pregnant mothers to know their HIV status in order to get help in time.

Through this grant, health workers at different levels received capacity building. A total of 2,322 health-care workers were trained on PMTCT and these include 643 nurses, 130 counsellors, 83 doctors and 1466 community health workers. The overall goal of these series of trainings is to ensure all health care workers are equipped with skills to provide effective PMTCT service at facility and community level.

Another contributing factor to the success of PMTCT is the extension of this service to the private hospitals. Currently the number of health facilities offering PMTCT in the country increased from 123 from the inception of the Round 7 grant in June 2008 to 186 by end of December 2009. In the beginning only public facilities were targeted, however, during the scale up process private facilities were also included, hence more facilities than the target were reached.

This increase in PMTCT coverage also resulted in more women being provided with prophylaxis. Approximately 80% of the women who tested positive received ARVs (prophylaxis and HAART) to prevent mother to child transmission. By December 2009, 50% of the HIV positive women were provided with ARVs to prevent MTCT and this exceeded the target by 3%.