The last 20 years or so have been very difficult years for HIV-infected mothers and health-care workers because of the huge dilemma around infant feeding. Mothers faced the situation of a chance of infecting their child if they breastfed. This fear drove international agencies and many countries to promote formula feeding and even distributed it for free, leading to many HIV-infected women opting for formula feeding. Soon the toll of this policy began to be felt, as formula fed infants began to succumb to malnutrition and death from diarrhea and pneumonia. Many of us scientists were desperate to find a way out for HIV-infected mothers and find ways of making breastfeeding safer. Slowly the...
↧