Efficacy of Strategies to Reduce Mother-to-Child HIV-1 Transmission in Argentina, 1993–2000

This study evaluated the success of a national program for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) of HIV-1 in 874 mother-infant pairs from Buenos Aires and surroundings. This population was referred to the National Reference Center for AIDS for diagnosis of neonatal infection during 1993-2000. The data revealed an increase in the use of antiretroviral therapy during pregnancy from 3.2% in 1993-1994 to 73.1% in 1999-2000 and in the use of cesarean delivery (reaching 54.8% in 1999-2000). However, the proportion of HIV-infected women who continued to breast-feed their children remained steady (around 12%). General improvement of the conditions for decreasing MTCT resulted in a significant decrease in the proportion of infected infants from 37.3% before 1995 to 10.7% in 1999-2000 and even 6.5% during 2001. Data on the time of diagnosis indicated that only 42.7% of the women knew about their HIV status before pregnancy, 44.8 knew during pregnancy, and 12.3% knew after the birth of their child. The main risk factor for HIV infection in the mothers was heterosexual contact (73%), and in the fathers, it was injection drug use (67%). These results point out the urgent need to develop additional strategies for prevention of MTCT of HIV-1 to generalize education, counseling, and testing of young women.