UNITED NATIONS, Dec 7 (AFP) - Philanthropic foundations said Friday they expected to commit 100 million dollars to a five-year pilot project to reduce mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS, which infects 600,000 babies a year.
Gordon Conway of the Rockefeller Foundation said this form of infection was an example of "obscene inequity" for developing nations where almost all the deaths occur.
Conway, who met UN Secretary General Kofi Annan late Thursday, told a news conference his foundation had pledged 10 million dollars to the project and others had already committed a total of close to 50 million.
The project, known as MTCT-Plus (for mother-to-child transmission), will study medical services in developing countries to see whether transmission rates can be cut by providing better treatment and care for women carrying the HIV virus.
Transmission in most cases occurs at birth, when the baby is bathed in the mother's blood; a small number of foetuses are infected in the womb; and, between 15 and 20 percent of infections are through breast-feeding.
Allan Rosenfeld, Dean of the Mailman School of Public Health at New York's Columbia University, said the risk of birth transmission was greatly reduced by giving the mother a single dose of the anti-retroviral drug Nevirapine.
But in most developing countries, "we then in effect say goodbye to the mother because we know that there is nothing we can do for her and that she is going to die in the not too distant future," he said.
Conway said the aim of the MTCT-Plus project was to extend and improve the mother's life, and thus to encourage pregnant women to be screened for HIV infection. If successful, it would also reduce the number of AIDS orphans and "in particular, restore faith in the health system," he said.
Peter Piot, the executive director of the UN joint AIDS programme (UNAIDS) said that thanks to the health services provided in wealthy countries, "it is now a rare event for a baby to born with HIV." Only about 200 babies a year were infected with HIV in the United States, he said.
Pregnant women are routinely screened for HIV infection, he said. If they carry the virus, they receive treatment; their babies are usually delivered by Caesarian section, which reduces exposure to blood; and mothers are given safe substitutes for breast milk.
Piot said there was "no single answer" to questions about breast-feeding by HIV-positive mothers in developing countries.
"If the feeding bottles cannot be sterilised or the milk substitute is no good, the risk of the baby dying from diarrhoea or malnutrition could easily outweigh the danger of HIV infection," he said.
The MTCT-Plus project will start with about 10 medical sites -- most are expected to be in sub-Saharan Africa -- and could rapidly expand to between 50 and 100, Conway said.
"We will be studying, but we will also be treating," Rosenfeld said.
He emphasised that any pregnant woman or mother who received treatment under MTCT-Plus would continue to receive it for the rest of her life.
"It would be immoral to stop at the end of the five-year pilot stage," he said.
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