This page is background information, last updated in May 2002 and still available for reference. For the latest on the Special Session on Children, please go to the Special Session index.

Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission of HIV

Prevention of mother - to - child transmission (PMTCT)
This session provided an overview of the importance of PMTCT in reducing current trends of the epidemic in the worst-affected countries. An opinion shared by all panellists was that PMTCT is possible.

Hon J. Phumaphi, Minister of Health Botswana, Moderator.
David Stanton, Senior Technical Advisor, USAID - Washington, Co- moderator.
Dr. Jose Martines, team Coordinator Neonatal and Infant Health Department of Child
and Adolescent Health and Development, WHO-Geneva, Panelist.
Dr. Valdiléa G. Veloso Dos Santos, Director of Rio de Janeiro State STD/AIDS
Program, State Department Brazil, Panelist.
Dr. Miriam Labbok, Senior Adviser, Infant and Young Child Feeding and Care,
UNICEF - New York.
Key commitments - none proposed.

Action points proposed :
To reduce the impact on child survival
· Global support is required to address the issues around Prevention Mother to Child Transmission (PMTCT) , since it makes a difference to child survival
· Provide good quality health services including Family planning
· Improve availability of supplies
· Upgrade Ante Natal Clinic (ANC) service delivery
· Provide good quality counselling
· Rapid testing with same day results, with Counselling for pregnant women who were not controled during pregnancy
· Effective communication
· Linkages to care and support

Infant feeding - UNICEF's five priority interventions
· Support development of comprehensive infant and young child feeding policies.
· Intensify support to implementation of the Code of Marketing of Breastmilk
Substitutes.
· Intensify efforts to promote, protect and support optimal infant and young
child feeding practices.
· Support HIV positive women to succeed in their infant feeding choice in the
context of HIV.
· Support country level learning, monitoring and evaluation, and operational
research.

Increasing access to antiretroviral drugs to reduce MTCT
· Reducing stigma and discrimination; through access to anti-retroviral drugs This will have considerable positive implications for low resource settings such as are found throughout sub Saharan Africa.