Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV Through Breastfeeding Improving Awareness and Education: A Short Narrative Review

Despite critical progress registered in the reduction of mother to child transmission (MTCT) of HIV worldwide, transmission through breastfeeding still contributes to almost 50% of pediatric HIV infections recorded every year. In this short narrative review, after development of an extensive backgro...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inInternational journal of women's health Vol. 14; pp. 697 - 703
Main Author Njom Nlend, Anne Esther
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New Zealand Dove Medical Press Limited 01.01.2022
Dove
Dove Medical Press
Subjects
Breast feeding
breastfeeding
Disease transmission
Health aspects
Highly active antiretroviral therapy
hiv
HIV (Viruses)
HIV infection
HIV testing
Infection
Pregnancy
Pregnant women
Prevention
Review
transmission
HIV
transmission
breastfeeding
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Summary:Despite critical progress registered in the reduction of mother to child transmission (MTCT) of HIV worldwide, transmission through breastfeeding still contributes to almost 50% of pediatric HIV infections recorded every year. In this short narrative review, after development of an extensive background on HIV and breastfeeding, some directions are suggested to address the key bottlenecks. Specifically, reinforcing the prevention of MTCT through breastfeeding (BF) in order to move towards elimination of MTCT prior to 2030 may require, among others strategies: tracking all women of child bearing age through HIV testing, improving testing and retesting of women during pregnancy and breastfeeding, strengthening adherence on antiretroviral therapy (ART) among pregnant and lactating women, ensuring continuum and retention in care of mother and baby-pairs up to 24 months, switching ART in non-viral suppressed mothers after improvement of adherence counseling. In addition, due to the burden of seroconversion during pregnancy or thereafter through BF, pre-exposure prophylaxis (PreP) for most at risk women should be implemented urgently. The opportunity to extend the infant prophylaxis to the whole lactating period should be assessed to address residual transmission amongst viral suppressed mothers.
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ISSN:1179-1411
1179-1411
DOI:10.2147/IJWH.S330715