UAC reports rising HIV infections among young women during pregnancy

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Despite efforts to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV, the Uganda AIDS Commission (UAC) reveals that a significant number of mothers are still contracting the virus during pregnancy and breastfeeding, passing it on to their babies.

Dr. Daniel Byamukama, who heads HIV prevention at UAC, stated that an assessment has shown that the majority of those newly infected are young mothers, which is undermining their efforts to end mother-to-child transmission. He says while some districts are recording zero infections in babies, in others, five percent of the mothers continue to spread the virus to their babies. More than 80% of the mothers spreading HIV to their children are women between ages 15 and 24, he says.

Byamukama explains that since 2008, there has been a significant reduction in mother-to-child transmission of HIV because the country adopted an innovation dubbed Option B Plus where all HIV-positive pregnant mothers are immediately enrolled in treatment.

He says that they are now realising that mothers who are transmitting the virus to their babies are those who start antenatal free from HIV, soon get infected, and are missed because in many facilities HIV testing is not done during each antenatal visit.

Commenting about these revelations by the commission, Trevor Emojel, the Country Youth Representative at an NGO AHF Uganda Cares said it’s concerning that Uganda is still finding challenges in the area of mother-to-child transmission, and yet the country has been at the forefront of the research to stop infection in children from the current five percent to zero.

Uganda was involved in the earliest research to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV in 2000 where HIV-positive mothers were given a dose of the HIV drug Nevirapine during labour to reduce chances of passing on the virus to their babies.

Emojel says all these options have not been fully utilized because young mothers living with the virus still face enormous stigma and don’t want to be seen swallowing drugs. Worse, he says those still negative do not have the power to negotiate safe options such as the use of condoms.

Away from stigma, Sylvia Pimer, a Youth Officer in the Ministry of Gender, Labor, and Social Development notes that the situation of young girls getting pregnant and getting infected is largely due to moral decadence. She says, that even with information and prevention options being largely available, the young women just abuse them to the extent of engaging in unsafe sex and opting for Post-Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP) later on.

However, to save the young women who are infecting their babies, Byamukama says there will be a need for interventions that focus on men. He says they are realising through research that interventions that exclusively target young women without involving men will not work, however, empowered or rich a young woman might be.

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