{"id":4679,"date":"2001-07-30T19:33:06","date_gmt":"2001-07-30T18:33:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moomango.co.uk\/htb\/?p=4679"},"modified":"2014-06-11T17:24:16","modified_gmt":"2014-06-11T17:24:16","slug":"uganda-to-offer-free-hiv-drugs-to-pregnant-women-to-prevent-vertical-hiv-transmission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/4679","title":{"rendered":"Uganda to offer free HIV drugs to pregnant women to prevent vertical HIV transmission"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Uganda will offer free AIDS drugs to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV through a voluntary counselling and testing program expected to be operating throughout the country by the end of 2002, Reuters reports.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A &#8220;limited&#8221; program providing 700 mothers in Kampala with free treatment began in April 2000, and that number is expected to double a year from now. Dr. Iyorlumun Uhaa, director of the United Nations Children&#8217;s Fund health and nutrition program in Uganda, said, &#8220;The expansion will require a lot of logistics &#8211; testing, counselling and infrastructure. But by the end of next year, we should be able to provide the service all over the country.&#8221; Johns Hopkins University researcher Laura Guay added, &#8220;Currently we are already working out of five sites which will quickly expand to 11 sites over the next year.&#8221; Last July, Guay and Ugandan scientists announced that nevirapine had been clinically proven to decrease the risk of vertical HIV transmission by up to 50%.<\/p>\n<p>The full nevirapine regimen, which is a single dose to the woman in labour and a single dose to the newborn within 72 hours of delivery, costs less than $4, compared to $800 for similar preventive therapy with ZDV. Uhaa said, &#8220;Currently we are administering ZDV to mothers in all but one of our sites. But the plan is to move towards the cheaper and easier-to-administer nevirapine at all our sites.&#8221; As the result of government efforts, the HIV infection rate among pregnant women is 20%, down from 33% in 1991 (Busharizi, Reuters, 24\/05).<\/p>\n<p>Source: Kaiser Daily HIV\/AIDS Reports<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.kaisernetwork.org\">http:\/\/www.kaisernetwork.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Uganda will offer free AIDS drugs to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV through a voluntary counselling and testing program expected to be operating throughout the country by the end of 2002, Reuters reports. A &#8220;limited&#8221; program providing 700 mothers in &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-treatment-access","category-pmtct-and-maternal-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4679\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}