Improving Uptake of Prevention of Mother-to-Child HIV Transmission Programs

The United Nations General Assembly Special Session in 2001 set a goal to reduce the proportion of HIV infected infants by 50% by 2010. Achieving this target would require that around 80% of pregnant women and their children need to receive essential HIV prevention, treatment and care. In an article published in the open access journal PLoS One, Lorainne Tudor Car and colleagues from Imperial College London carried out a systematic review to assess the effect of integrated perinatal prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV interventions (PMTCT) in low and middle-income countries. Five studies met their inclusion criteria. After reviewing these studies, they found limited, non-generalizable evidence to support the effectiveness of integrated PMTCT programs. None of the included studies evaluated integration of the whole PMTCT program. Further, the uptake of integrated PMTCT interventions was mostly low, and did not reach the 80% target set by United Nations General Assembly Special Session .They concluded that further research measuring coverage and other relevant outcomes is urgently needed to inform the design of services delivering PMTCT programs in low and middle income countries.

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