Babies saved from HIV infection• St Dominic Hospital leads the way ( The Mirror Front Page)

Sat December 5, 2009
THE St Dominic Hospital at Akwatia in the Eastern Region has made history for being the first health facility in Ghana to prevent the highest number of children from being infected with HIV from their HIV-positive mothers.
Reports from the hospital indicate that only one out of 32 babies whose mothers were HIV positive and were, therefore, put on treatment under the Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission (PMTCT) programme, tested positive to the virus.
The figure represents 96.9 per cent of the children whose mothers received the intervention.
The Head of the Public Health Department of the hospital, Dr Nana Owusu-Ensaw, said as part of the preventive measures, mothers of the children were given special medication during labour and their babies placed under formula feeding for 18 months.
He said that was to prevent the children from being breast-fed, which could have exposed them to HIV infection from their infected mothers.
HIV infection from an HIV-positive mother to her child during pregnancy, labour, delivery or breastfeeding is called mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) and currently health workers the world over are trying hard to prevent as many babies as possible from getting infected by their mothers.
In an interview with The Mirror, Dr Owusu-Ensaw said the PMTCT programme was established at the hospital in 2005 to educate all pregnant mothers on HIV and AIDS due to the high prevalence of mother-to-child infection of HIV in the district and the country as a whole.
He explained that from July 2007 to May 2008, 62 children born to mothers who were given special medication during labour were put under monitoring for 18 months.
Dr Owusu-Ensaw said out of the 62 children, 32, which stood for 51.6 per cent, could be traced, while 30, representing 48.4 per cent, could not be traced and were, therefore, not monitored.
He said after the 18-month period, the 32 children who were traced were tested for HIV and that was when it came out that only one had the virus.
“That means 31 of them, which represents 96.9 per cent, were negative, while the remaining one, which is 3.1 per cent, was positive,” he stressed.
When asked to explain further, Dr Owusu-Ensaw said the facility was able to trace those 32 children because they were placed under formula feeding which was given to them by the Public Health Unit of the hospital free of charge.
“The above results indicate that PMTCT works and we hereby encourage all pregnant women to undergo HIV testing to know their status so that interventions can be put in place so save their babies,” he said.
Dr Owusu-Ensaw said a challenge involved the high cost of Lactogen for formula feeding, noting that one baby consumed about six tins of Lactogen a month.
He also said monitoring the mothers was expensive in terms of the transportation cost involved and expressed concern over the issue of pregnant women who gave wrong addresses for fear of stigmatisation, which resulted in the inability to trace them.
That, according to the doctor, was why some babies could not be traced for final testing after the 18-month period.