The one-year community based program for prevention of mother to child transmission, called CB PMTC in short, was initiated six months ago but has only been in effect for the last three months following training of the health officials and members of the community.
The program aims to reach every pregnant women in the district, that has a higher rate of AIDS prevalence, to ensure that the disease is not transferred to children from HIV positive mothers. The Mother Group, women volunteers and teachers are mobilized in the villages to report pregnancies and take the pregnant women to the nearest health posts for blood check-up.
If the mother turns out HIV positive, she is immediately given nevirapine medicine and advised to bring the child immediately after birth to administer the same medicine. Experts put the risk of transmission of the disease through pregnancy, labor and delivery at about 25% and the single dose of nevirapine to the mother and another dose to the child significantly reduces the risk to just about 1%.
"We have yet to receive the actual report but I was told recently that they found two HIV positive mothers in the last month," says Director of NCASC Dr Laxmi Raj Pathak.
The current data provided by the NCASC puts the number of HIV positive children of 0-4 years at 311 with seven new cases found in Chaitra 2065. Though NCASC doesn´t specifically say that the cases are due to mother to child transfer, Dr Pathak maintains that almost all the cases are owing to transmission from mother as the children that age have almost no chance of getting the disease through other means of transmission.
Similarly, the data puts the number of cases in children of 5-9 years at 388 with 10 new cases in Chaitra 2065. The NCASC has identified mother to child transfer as one of the major reasons of transmission of the disease and is confident that they can almost wipe out this mode of transmission through these endeavors.
"We have started the program in 26 out of the 55 VDCs (Village Development Committees) in the district and will complete it in the remaining six months," says Pathak.
The community-based project will be replicated in other remote districts with higher prevalence of AIDS depending upon the success of the pilot project in Achham, Pathak adds.
PMTC facility is also available in 16 hospitals in different districts apart from a few hospitals in Kathmandu Valley.
premdhakal@myrepublica.com
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