In 2002, approximately 800,000 children worldwide became infected with HIV through mother-to-child transmission, with more than 90 percent residing in resource-poor countries. The manufacturer of NVP, Boehringer-Ingelheim, has offered to provide the drug at no cost to developing countries that implement a plan of providing the drug to pregnant, HIV-seropositive women and their infants. Despite the regimen's availability, Dr. Jackson says, obstacles remain to implementing this regimen in resource-poor nations. For example, prenatal HIV testing and counseling are often not available, and child-maternal health care facilities and infrastructure may be weak in many of these countries. "We would love to see these obstacles overcome," says Dr. Jackson, "because it would mean that some several hundred thousand infants would be spared from HIV infection each year." Several nonprofit outreach organizations are now offering anti-HIV drug assistance programs, including NVP treatment for mothers and their infants, in countries such as Kenya, Uganda, Cameroon and Rwanda. In the United States, HIV-infected mothers and their infants are routinely treated with multi-drug antiretroviral regimens.
"This study has clearly demonstrated that meaningful, long-term, complicated and sophisticated studies can be conducted in resource-poor developing countries," said Edmund C. Tramont, M.D., director of NIAID's Division of AIDS.
This study also received support from other NIH components, including the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development; the National Institute on Drug Abuse; and the National Institute of Mental Health.
NIAID is a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is an agen
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Contact: Jennifer Wenger
jwenger@niaid.nih.gov
301-402-1663
NIH/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
11-Sep-2003