Dakar, August 19 (APS) – Senegal must succeed in eliminating mother-to-child transmission of HIV, so that no more children are born with this virus, urged the executive secretary of the National Council for the Fight against AIDS (CNLS), Doctor Safiatou Thiam.
”You hear me talk about the national mobilization campaign to accelerate the care of children, but normally children should no longer be born with HIV,” she said in an interview with the ‘APS.
According to her, Senegal has fewer than 5,000 children living with HIV. She stressed the need to have a national cohort in order to follow up infected children and put them on treatment for their well-being, especially since they can grow up without HIV.
But it does imply the vision that there should be no more children born with HIV. “It is possible with the prevention of mother-to-child transmission,” she said. According to her, ”a pregnant woman who takes antiretroviral (ARV) drugs cannot transmit HIV to her child”.
She calls for ”finding all pregnant women, screening them, and putting them on treatment”. This requires, she says, to “have strong support from mother and child services”. Added to this is that midwives must “bring this strategy head-on so that we can decide together” that no more children should be born with HIV.
Doctor Safiatou Thiam declares that the other challenge must consist in screening the last third, that is to say ”hidden and almost inaccessible populations”, which must be screened and put on ARVs.
“These are people you have to look for and find, because they may have orientations or a type of life that they would not want to share with the people,” she explains.
She suggests finding strategies to enable these people to agree to be screened and treated.
”I think we need a differentiated reflection on this approach, because I think there are a lot of men in the remaining third, in what needs to be screened and who cannot come for reasons unacknowledged”, said doctor Safiatou Thiam.