Global
Strategy for Infant and Young Child
Feeing :World
Health Assembly (WHA) and UNICEF adopted
the Global Strategy,which
sets five additional targets: national
policy on infant and young child feeding,
community outreach, information support,
infant feeding in difficult circumstances
and monitoring and evaluation.
The risk of HIV transmission through breastfeeding presents policy makers, infant feeding counsellors and mothers with a difficult dilemma. They must balance the risk of death due to artificial feeding with the risk of HIV transmission through breastfeeding. These risks are dependent on the age of the infant and household conditions and are not precisely known. Other factors must be considered at the same time, such as the risk of stigmatisation (if not breastfeeding signals the mother’s HIV status), the financial costs of replacement feeding and the risk of becoming pregnant again. Policies and programmes to meet this challenge should provide access to voluntary and confidential counselling and testing (VCCT) and, for HIV-positive mothers, counselling on infant feeding options. Safeguards should be in place to protect, promote and support breastfeeding in the rest of the population.
Activity
and Result
"7th
Asia-Pacific United Nations
Prevention of Mother-to-Child
Transmission Task Force
Meeting" held in Chennai,
India in September 2009.
IBFAN Asia participated
in the meeting
IBFAN
Asia / Breastfeeding Promotion
Network of India (BPNI)
and UNICEF ROSA organized
"Infant Feeding and HIV:
A Regional Colloquium for
the Asia Pacific" held on
28-29 November 2003, New
Delhi, India.
Rapid
assessment of infant feeding
and HIV in national PMTCT/PPTCT
programmes in 5 countries.
IBFAN
groups in Afghanistan, Bangladesh,
Indonesia, Malaysia and
Nepal conducted the rapid
assessment through a participatory
process in June 2005.Given
below are the reports:
The
study which has been published
in the New England Journal
Of Medicine (17 June 2010)
has concluded that 'All
regimens of HAART from
pregnancy through 6 months
post partum resulted in
high rates of virologic
suppression, with an overall
rate of mother-to-child
transmission of 1.1%.'
Please use this information
to have an enhanced advocacy
in your part of the world
to strengthen breastfeeding
counseling services for
HIV positive mothers.
click
here
IBFAN
Asia-Position Statement
on HIV and Infant Feeding
: Breastfeeding
is the optimal way to
feed an infant. It greatly
improves the quality of
life of mother, baby and
family by providing unique
nutritional, immunological,
economical, ecological,
psychological and child
spacing benefits. Breastfeeding
alsoenhancesmaternal health
inmanyways.
