United Press International - July 31, 2002
Katrina Woznicki, UPI Science News

USAID, an independent organization of the federal government, will finance the foundation's international Call to Action Project, which provides medication to reduce mother-to-child transmission and also offers prevention, treatment, and other AIDS care services to families around the globe.

"Every day there are 2,000 children infected with HIV and we know that you can prevent those infections from occurring," Kate Carr, president and chief executive officer of the foundation, told United Press International. "This grant will enable us to not only start new sites, but also expand existing sites so they grow from say a central hospital to all the pediatric clinics and a central hospital."

Carr said this is the largest grant the foundation has ever received. They want not only to focus on reducing mother-to-child infections with the human immunodeficiency virus, but also to provide counseling on issues such as breast-feeding, which can transmit the AIDS virus, and services to mothers so they are able to survive and care for their families. "I think it's really going enable us have much larger impact on prevention," she said. This money will help so these children will "have a mother around to take of them."

Although Africa is the "epicenter of the epidemic" and the Glaser foundation has concentrated its programs there and in Southeast Asia, Carr said, HIV cases are rising exponentially in Russia, India and the Caribbean -- where the foundation is looking to expand its ongoing but limited efforts -- and China, where AIDS remains an emerging problem but the foundation is not yet operating.

Dr. Paul De Lay, a senior adviser on HIV/AIDS to USAID, said the agency's grant was awarded in response to an unsolicited proposal from the Glaser foundation.

The foundation was the perfect partner, De Lay said, because it was one of the first groups to place health care providers in these countries and begin screening mothers for HIV.

"They seemed a natural partner," De Lay told UPI. The foundation screens about 100,000 women for the AIDS virus every year, he said, "And we're hoping ... we can get up to a million women screened per year by the end of 2003 and there'd be no way we could do that without the incredible work that (the Glaser foundation) does."

The funding will be used to help more women undergo antiretroviral therapy during childbirth. This involves the mother taking a tablet of nevaripene when she goes into labor. Within 48 hours of the baby's birth, the infant receives a pediatric dosage of nevaripene via drops in the mouth. This approach cuts transmission risk in half, De Lay said. "It's one of the glimmers of hope in the midst of this global tragedy," he said.

However, the $100 million USAID grant does not begin to make a dent in the problem, said Patricia Siplon, a political science professor at St. Michael's College in Colchester, Vt., and author of the book, "AIDS and the Policy Struggle in the United States," published this year.

Siplon told UPI she returned two weeks ago after spending six months in Tanzania interviewing HIV-infected women who had lost their husbands to the disease. The Glaser foundation's work abroad helps, she said, but is not yet enough.

"It's a great start," Siplon said of the grant award. "I just can't emphasize enough how immense the problem is and I don't think it's being emphasized enough. I came back from Tanzania thinking (Americans) really don't understand the magnitude."

Many of the infected women not only are caring for their own children, she said, but also are caring for children who already have lost their parents to AIDS.

"If you take care of these mothers, you're not only taking care of their children, you're taking care of other's people children," she said. "The issue is resources -- there's just not enough going into it. What's happening now are good starts, but that's how they have to be viewed."

The Pediatric AIDS Foundation, in Santa Monica, Calif., was started in 1988 after Elizabeth Glaser learned she had become infected with HIV from a blood transfusion she received in 1981 during the birth of her first child. Glaser, her firstborn and her second child all developed AIDS. The organization was co-founded by Susan DeLaurentis and Susie Zeegen, both friends of Glaser's. She died in 1994.

The AIDS epidemic is ripping through entire communities in Africa, Southeast Asia, and other areas of the developing world. Passing down the AIDS virus during pregnancy or childbirth is a huge problem in these countries and a key target for thwarting the disease from spreading further.

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