A new study concludes some pregnant women in Canada are still passing HIV to their babies, despite the fact that this country has all the tools needed to stop it from happening at all.
Montreal researchers combed through an HIV surveillance database and found 33 babies born in Canada between 2012 and 2021 were infected during pregnancy or delivery.
According to the World Health Organization, mothers living with HIV who don’t receive treatment have a 15 per cent to 45 per cent chance of transmitting the virus to their babies “during pregnancy, labour, delivery or breastfeeding.”
In Canada, “there’s no excuses to have any mother-to-child transmission,” said the new study’s senior author Dr. Fatima Kakkar, a pediatric infectious diseases specialist at CHU Sainte-Justine and the University of Montreal.
Antiretroviral treatments can be given to pregnant women to bring the amount of HIV virus in their blood down to an “undetectable” level, Kakkar said.
That brings the likelihood of transmitting the virus in utero down to less than one per cent, she said.
-This report by the Canadian Press was first published on May 1, 2023.
