Doctors report that 98% of mother-to-child transmission of the human immunodeficiency virus can be prevented if detected and treated early enough. The numbers come from guidelines published in the Annals of Internal Medicine encouraging pregnant women to get tested for HIV.
If detected and treated in the early stages of pregnancy the risk of handing down the virus drops from one in four to one in 20.
Doctors say that the main factors causing ignorance in the mothers involved are that expectant mothers are rarely offered HIV testing and that many are unaware of infection because their partners have not been forthright with their exploits.
“The reality is that people don’t know everything about everyone’s vice, even when they are very intimate,” said Dr. Diana Petitti, the chair of the US Preventative Services Task Force . “There are lots of surprises.”
The fact that modern medicine has caused HIV infection to become much less deadly should also encourage pregnant women to get tested by assuaging some of their fears.
“HIV has evolved into a more chronic manageable illness, rather than a death sentence it seemed to be in the ’80s and ’90s, because of the availability of therapy,” said Petitti.
Lack of diagnosis is a severe problem that doctors can address. The task force says it is not so much refusal of testing as it is the lack of offering testing that causes women to go undiagnosed. The guidelines encourage doctors to offer testing to all patients.
The task force also reiterated high risk groups of individuals who should consider testing.
These include:
Men who have had sex with men after 1975;
Men and women having unprotected sex with multiple partners;
Past or present injection-drug users;
Men and women who exchange sex for money or drugs or have sex partners who do;
People whose past or present sex partners were HIV infected, bisexual, or injection-drug abusers;
People being treated for other sexually transmitted diseases;
People with a history of blood transfusion between 1978 and 1985.
