Tirunelveli: 25 HIV +ve pregnant women go missing

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25 HIV +ve pregnant women go missing

Saturday June 23 2007 02:48 IST

TIRUNELVELI: Public health officials in Tirunelveli district are

clueless about 25 HIV+ pregnant women who had gone `missing' last

year. No one has any clue about them and their babies.

According to official records, the Health Department lost track of 25

pregnant women infected with HIV, who, in all probability, might have

delivered babies by now, passing on the virus to the children at a

time when the health care system was well equipped to prevent mother-

to-child transmission.

In 2006, the records showed that 92 pregnant women were infected with

HIV. While 67 women were administered Nevoropine drug for preventing

HIV transmission to the newborn, 25 women had gone missing. This May,

one more HIV infected pregnant woman had gone missing.

``Repeated referral of patients by the hospitals, whether private or

government, is the main reason for mothers missing the follow- up,''

said Dr Anburajan, director of PEACE center, one of the very few

hospitals treating HIV positive patients in Tirunelveli district.

``As the ante-natal mothers find it tedious to go to various

hospitals they would have opted for home delivery and thus missed out

from follow-ups either by the NGOs working on AIDS project or from

the Health Department,'' he said.

Unless HIV testing is made compulsory for ANC cases in private

hospitals, the real picture would not be arrived at, said a field

staff working on AIDS programme.

Tirunelveli District DD (Health) K A Meera Mohideen blamed the NGOs

working on AIDS projects for lack of coordination with the public

health department. ``Only recently, I got the message from TANSACS,''

he said.

The `missed outs' must have had their delivery outside the district

or in some private hospitals, he said assuring that the department

would trace them soon. He assured to appoint a medical officer

exclusively to ensure a regular follow-up of pregnant women from this

year.

When contacted, TANSACS director Supriya Sahu said outreach field

staff had been appointed from this year to detect ``missing mothers''

in all the 385 blocks in the State, along with a district level

programme manager.

On the demand for making HIV testing a must for ante-natal mothers in

private hospitals, Sahu said that it was not in the policy of the

government.

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