Imphal, October 03: A joint team of UNICEF, NACO and State officials who toured different parts of the State from September 19 to 22 to review the progress of PPTCT programme being taken up to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS transmission from mother to child has submitted recommendations to the State Government for dealing with the problem effectively.

Disclosing this to The Sangai Express, Dr L Kokindro, MD of State Reference Lab, JN Hospital, who is also the VCCTC in-charge said that the progress of the PPTCT programme has been reviewed by the joint team taking serious note over the increase of HIV infection among the pregnant women in the State.

So far, out of the 35,000 blood samples tested at Voluntary Confidential Counselling and Testing Centre (VCCTC) at the hospital, 12,000 pregnant mothers have been confirmed HIV positive, he disclosed, adding that the total figure might be around 20,800 if the datas available at the Centre at RIMS is also counted.

On an average 15 to 20 would-be-mothers are coming daily voluntarily for the test at the Centre of JN Hospital, he informed.

More than one percent of the pregnant women in Manipur have been affected with HIV/AIDS, Dr Kokindro said.

He expressed concern over the fact that although spread of HIV/AIDS among the Injection Drug Users (IDUs) has come down, the spread of the deadly virus through sexual contact between man and woman, between man and man, commercial sex workers, etc has been on the rise at an alarming rate.

He said that newly born child could be saved from falling prey to the deadly virus if 200 milligrams of Nevirapine dose is given to the would-be-mothers as soon as they start having labour pain and another 2 milligrams of Nevaripine dose per kg of its weight to the newly born child within 72 hours of giving birth.

The success rate of saving the newly born children from the deadly virus with the use of Nevirapine is 50 percent, he added.

However, he went on to say that most cases of delivery are not done in Government Hospitals where such facilities are available.

Specially in remote areas and villages, the delivery is done at their respective homes with the help of midwives.

Dr Kokindro informed that the rate of using Nevirapine by the would-be-mothers at States like Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala has reached 80-85 percent and 41 percent at the neighbouring State Nagaland while it is only 35 percent in Manipur.

In view of lack adequate medical facilities and other infrastructures in most of the health care units in the State, the joint team of the UNICEF and NACO has recommended to the Government for extending the Nevirapine facilities to private hospitals/clinics as well as for imparting training to the midwives on administering Nevirapine.

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