Preventive treatment saves child from Aids

By Athena Karsera

A WOMAN who was HIV-positive when she became pregnant has had a healthy baby thanks to preventive treatment, her doctor confirmed yesterday.

The head of Larnaca hospital’s Gregoriou Clinic, Dr John Demetriades, told the Cyprus Mailthe preventive medication had been prescribed during the woman’s pregnancy.

The drugs in question dilute the virus’ concentration in the body.

The newborn baby, whose exact date of birth was not revealed, was also given the medicine in the month following its birth.

The baby was delivered by caesarean section in order to minimise the infant’s contact with the mother’s bodily fluids and has since undergone medical examinations which have shown no sign of the deadly virus.

The baby is already more than 24 months old, and so is officially clear of the illness. This makes the child the first to be born healthy from an HIV positive mother in Cyprus.

A second baby born to an Aids carrier, who was given the same treatment and is slightly younger, has not yet reached the 24 month mark.

Medical examinations, however, have so far shown the child to be free of the illness.

Demetriades told the Cyprus Mailthat “three women with Aids have given birth in Cyprus: the first birth occurred before the medication course was implemented, and the baby was born HIV positive.”

Without the treatment, which is being used all over the world, Demetriades said there was a 40 to 45 per cent chance the baby of an Aids sufferer would itself be born HIV positive.

The treatment reduces the risk to around seven per cent.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.