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Pregnancy
and HIV: It is important that all pregnant women be tested for HIV by the health care professional providing prenatal care. Universal HIV counseling and voluntary HIV testing is now the standard of care for all pregnant women. If you have been tested for HIV before, you still need to get tested once you have learned that you are pregnant. It can take up to 6 months from the time of infection for HIV to be detected by the test. If you do not have HIV when tested, avoid having sex without using a condom, having sex with multiple partners, and sharing drug needles. Uninfected women who continue to have unprotected sex or share drug needles should be retested for HIV in the last 3 months of their pregnancy. Why is it important that all pregnant women be tested? Primarily, for the health of the pregnant woman. In order to care for your baby properly after it is born, you need to be as healthy as possible. HIV testing can determine if you have HIV disease, and will enable your health care provider to determine what treatments you may need to assure that your health is as good as it can be. Also of great importance, if you are found to be HIV positive, steps can be taken to greatly reduce the risk of your passing the HIV virus on to your baby. A drug known as AZT, also known as ZDV (zidovudine) , can be given to you during pregnancy, and labor, and given to your new born baby for 6 weeks after delivery to greatly reduce the chance of the baby becoming HIV positive. Your health care provider may recommend other drugs for treating your HIV disease to keep you as healthy as possible. Recent studies indicate that the risk of the mother infecting her baby may be further reduced by delivering the baby by caesarean section (See http://www.hcfa.gov/hiv/cesar2.htm). However, currently caesarean sections are not recommended for women with HIV disease unless medically necessary. Your doctor may choose to discuss this with you if she or he feels it is appropriate. The reason that all pregnant women should be tested no matter whether they think they could be HIV positive is because no woman really knows her real risk for HIV infection. The most rapidly increasing group of new HIV infection is through sex between a woman and a man. Also, if HIV counseling is given to all pregnant women, and HIV testing is then offered to all pregnant women, neither you nor your health care provider will have to guess whether you should receive HIV counseling and offered testing. If all pregnant women receive HIV counseling no one is being singled out as being more likely to be HIV- infected. In October 1998 in a report to the Congress, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences recommended routine testing for all pregnant women to further reduce the incidence of mother to child HIV infection. Under the Institute of Medicine recommendation, the mother would be given notification that the test was to be done and informed that she could chose not to take the test. This recommendation was adopted by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) , and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) in a statement issued in July 1999. According to the AAP and ACOG statement, pretest HIV counseling may be provided, but should not serve as a barrier to HIV testing if counseling is not conducted. The Public Health Service is currently reviewing the IOM Report's recommendations and is expected to address their recommendations in guidelines to be published in late 1999 or early 2000. Additional information on HIV counseling and testing is available from the AIDS Treatment Information Service 1-800-448-0440 (English and Espanol) 1-888-480-3739 (TTY-TDD) The cost of the call and the service are free and confidential. Next:Reducing Transmission to Infants This article was produced by the Health Care Financing Administration and Department of Health and Human Services |
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