In Spain and other industrialized countries, almost all babies born to mothers infected with HIV are not affected by this disease, as reported in The III Day of Pediatric Nursing in Gipuzkoa (Spain).
This is due to the latest advances in antiretroviral treatment from pregnancy to the birth of the baby, although obviously we are talking about places where such treatments are feasible, because the data in underdeveloped countries have nothing to do with them.
But when it is possible to administer the treatments, most babies are born healthy even though their mothers have HIV. When the HIV-positive woman becomes pregnant, special treatment is established from the 16 weeks that is applied, in addition, during childbirth and throughout the first 45 days of the newborn's life.
Although sometimes the baby is born with antibodies from the mother who have HIV, over time and the retrovirals it loses them. After 18 months it is already known whether the child is affected by the disease or not. All these data are, of course, when the disease, AIDS, has not yet developed.
According to statements by María Collado, a nurse at Donostia hospital, from 1997 to 2007, 96 people infected with HIV have given birth, and of all those pregnancies, only in two cases has the child been affected. In addition, one of them was because the mother did not know she was infected and the treatment began late.
In short, they are very positive and hopeful data for the future of women who want to have healthy children despite their illness.
