Screen pregnant women for AIDS: expert
December 1, 2004
All pregnant women in Australia should be screened for HIV/AIDS, a prominent researcher said.
Dr Nick Graves, a senior researcher at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), said a recent study had shown there were a small number of pregnant women in Australia with undiagnosed HIV/AIDS.
“It might be that their partners travel abroad and have unprotected sex with sex workers and so these women are highly surprised when they find out they are HIV,” he told a public health conference in Brisbane.
“If that situation continues to the birth of their child then there is a 30 per cent risk that the HIV infection will be passed from the mother to the child.”
Dr Graves said a population-based screening program for pregnant women would help find the infection which could be treated with drugs, dramatically cutting the risk of infecting their child.
Up to 2001, there have been 88 cases of mother-to-child transmission, 37 of which have occurred since 1994, Dr Graves said.
Meanwhile, a world AIDS expert has urged Prime Minister John Howard to follow the example of China’s president and help kick-start the stalled public education campaign about AIDS.
President Hu Jintao shook hands with an AIDS patient in a Beijing hospital, the first time a Chinese president has publicly and deliberately had physical contact with an infected person.
AIDS activist Dr Mechai Viravaidya, also known as Mr Condom in his native Thailand, where he is also a senator, said Mr Howard should help raise public awareness on AIDS.
“The biggest problem in the world is in Asia and Australia is trying to be part of Asia, so it has to be part of understanding it and helping to spread the message,” he said.