Mothers infect their own children. And this is already at birth. Newborns would be saved by a “emperor”, and sometimes it would be enough to administer antiretroviral drugs to the woman during pregnancy. Nobody suggests it because they have no idea about the virus infection. Every pregnant Polish woman is entitled to free HIV tests, but 70 percent of doctors do not order them. The Ombudsman for Children wrote a letter to the Minister of Health on this matter.
“I appeal to the Minister for the protection of children against HIV infection. Despite the existing possibilities of full protection of a child against such infection, there are still cases of maternal infections in children in Poland ”- Marek Michalak, the Ombudsman for Children, wrote this in a letter to Konstanty Radziwiłł, Minister of Health.
There are 1000 HIV-infected children in Poland. Last year, four became infected during childbirth – these are just cases confirmed by tests. There may be more of them, and all could have been avoided. It was enough to terminate the delivery by caesarean section and tell the mother that she could not breastfeed her baby. And earlier, while pregnant, give her antiretroviral drugs. In the hospitals where these women gave birth, no one told them that. Why? Because neither they, nor the midwives or doctors knew that they were carriers of the virus.
All pregnant women in Poland are entitled to two free HIV tests. Blood should be drawn for the first time in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy, and the second time between 33 and 37 weeks.
The second test is especially important, because the result of the test depends on the choice of how the delivery will take place, the way of feeding the newborn, and the decision whether to give antiretroviral drugs to the baby. This is the only chance your baby will not be infected.
There are currently about 3,3 million HIV-infected people in the world, 18 in Poland. The National AIDS Center reports that the most common infection is through sexual contact (88 percent of infections). And mostly young people (aged 20–39) become infected, which is the period when they most often become parents. In Poland, the number of infections has increased in recent years. Newly diagnosed women account for 15-20 percent of all diagnoses. And 90 percent of XNUMX Polish children living with HIV became infected from their mothers during childbirth and during breastfeeding.
We asked the Ministry of Health for a comment. We heard that the letter “was received by the Ministry of Health by fax and that, considering Art. 11 sec. 3 of the Act of 6 January 2000 on the Ombudsman for Children, a reply to the letter of the Ombudsman for Children will be prepared without undue delay and provided, however not later than within 30 days »and until then the ministry will refrain from commenting on the matter in the media.