Antiretroviral drugs aid HIV positive women to deliver healthy babies

Out of the 453 pregnant women who tested HIV positive in the New Juaben Municipality last year, only 33 of the babies some of them delivered tested HIV positive.

The rest of the babies tested HIV negative thanks to the antiretroviral drugs given to the pregnant women after testing positive to the virus under the Prevention of the Mother to Child Transmission of the HIV project.

Ms Rose Nani, New Juaben Municipal HIV Programme Coordinator made this known during a talk on the new phase of HIV during a meeting with members of the Koforidua Branch of the Planned Parenthood Association of Ghana in Koforidua on Friday.

She explained that the New Juaben Health Authorities suspected that some of the pregnant women might not have taken their drugs as prescribed for them, hence the high number of children who were born HIV Positive.

Ms Nani said to ensure that the pregnant women who tested HIV positive had access to the drugs, the Municipal Directorate of the Ghana Health Service had decided to ensure that all the 18 public health facilities in the Municipality were supplied with the Antiretroviral Therapy (ART) services while the nurses in-charge supervise the daily taken of the drugs.

She said a research conducted by the World Health Organisation proved that, when People Living with HIV were put on the ART, their capacity to infect others was reduced by 96 per cent.

She said with such discovery, it had made it possible for couples, who are HIV positive to marry and have children.

Source: GNA