Chronicle Editor
Robin Muchetu, Senior Reporter
MORE than 4 700 children are born with HIV annually in Zimbabwe, a situation that health officials are trying to bring under control by encouraging early testing of pregnant women and scaling up Triple Elimination of Mother to Child Transmission (EMTCT).
About 30 percent of undiagnosed children eventually die by the of age two years. Triple EMTCT is the elimination of infection of HIV, syphilis, and Hepatitis B infection from mother to child. An estimated 1.3 million people are living with HIV and of that estimate, about 1.2 million are on Antiretroviral Therapy (ART).
Dr Angela Mushavi, the National Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission, and Pediatric HIV Care and Treatment Coordinator in the Ministry of Health and Child Care said the numbers were alarming and affecting the World Health Organisation (WHO) validation for having eliminated mother-to-child transmission of HIV.
“We have one indicator that is a problem, which is the case rate. This is to say per every 100 000 live births we should be having less than 250 babies that are HIV positive. If you are less than 250 WHO may qualify you for the gold tier. But if your case rate is 750 or more per 100 000 live births then all you can be rewarded for is the bronze tier. The case rate is a challenge for us because in Zimbabwe we continue to see that our case rate is still very high, we are not yet at less than 250 HIV-positive children.
“For Zimbabwe in our data currently, we see about 4700 new cases of HIV-positive babies per year. We are still not where we want to be. Zimbabwe records about 500 000 pregnancies per annum and 95 percent of these women must book their pregnancies, test for HIV, and initiate a minimum of 95 percent or more on ART as part of reaching the WHO pre-qualification standards on eliminating HIV transmission from mother to child,” said Dr Mushavi.
She said the Ministry was tackling all three diseases at once in order to reduce transmission from the mother to child and also reduce mortality but said more children need to be placed on ART.
“Only 73 percent of our children are on ART in Zimbabwe. There is a Global Alliance to End AIDS in children by 2030 so we want to see what it is that we can accelerate so that more and more of our children are put on Antiretrovirals. This alliance was launched in 2022 and it has four pillars. We need to test our children early, at birth if the mother is HIV positive, we do not have to wait long and we initiate treatment,” she said.
Dr Mushavi said women should make an effort to know their status before they are pregnant so that they start ART and suppress their viral load. She said when a baby is born and tests negative, a repeat test is performed on the child six weeks to determine if they are “really” negative. It is further repeated at nine months to find out that indeed the child is negative. She said this serial testing is done in case a breastfeeding mother is not adhering to her treatment which may lead to infection during breastfeeding.
“We still see in this day and age, babies that are not tested for HIV. If you take 100 children born with HIV and parents are unaware, in the first year of life we lose 30 of them. This is how bad it is. By two years of age, if you do not do anything about it, we lose another third, because of lack of testing and treatment. A delayed diagnosis is a serious issue in the country, these children will die, if not they grow up with ill health, they develop meningitis which affects their development,” she said.
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