The Story of the Week:

Patient #554: A healthy 24 year old woman who walked 10 miles on foot to the HIV clinic with her sick 15 month old baby. Her baby is so sick that he now weighs only 16 lbs. [HIV can be passed from mother to baby during the process of childbirth or breastfeeding] Because HIV progression to disease occurs faster in infants than in adults, the mother may still be healthy, but the child will get sick from opportunistic infections at a young age. When she was tested she was found to be HIV+ with a CD4 count of 599 (in the US treatment with ARVs begins below 350; in Zambia below 200). Although she does not need treatment now, she has a disease that is likely to be fatal, that has an intense social stigma, and she has learned that she may have given her fifteen month old baby HIV. She was given vitamins, which may help delay AIDS in undernourished people, and an appointment for three months.

Patient #553: Fifteen-month-old baby of #554 above. Admitted underweight with diarrhea, 16 lbs. After treatment for malnutrition he now weighs 21 lbs. Now on multivitamins and Septrin prophylaxis (to prevent PCP pneumonia and cerebral toxoplasmosis). As long as he stays healthy, we will not start ARVs but will retest the baby for AIDS after he is 18 months old and has been weaned for three months. A mother's antibodies stay in her baby for up to 18 months and are transmitted in breast milk, so we cannot know for sure whether this baby has AIDS until then.

Cases like these really break my heart. It is bad enough to find out that you have a terrible disease, but to have given it to your child would be almost unbearable. By providing medications, your support can prevent babies from being born with AIDS and save childrens' lives and ease their parents pain.