The Department of Health has been urged to introduce routine HIV testing for pregnant women. An Independent senator, Dr Mary Henry, said paediatric AIDS is almost entirely preventable if a mother is aware of having the virus and receives treatment.
"It is ridiculous that this has not been introduced when you consider the incredible strides that have been made in the treatment of HIV, especially in relation to babies born to mothers who are HIV positive," said Dr Henry.
Dr Henry has written to the Minister for Health, Mr Cowen, saying she believes he has a legal obligation to act on the matter.
"There is a test available and there is treatment which brings the transmission rate from mother to baby to practically zero."
Dr Karina Butler, consultant in paediatric infectious diseases at Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Dublin, said yesterday she had been calling for over a year for the introduction of the test, which would be offered to all pregnant mothers.
Dr Butler said she had recently treated a baby who had been breast-fed for two weeks after its birth before the mother realised she was HIV positive. "Hopefully this baby will not be infected, but its chances would have been so much better if it had been treated during pregnancy. It simply never dawned on the mother that she was at risk. Like all of us, people think it will never happen to them."
It is believed that treating these women with a combination of drugs, and monitoring the level of virus in their blood during pregnancy, decrease to less than 5 per cent the chance of the baby being born with HIV.
Dr Butler said that of the eight pregnant women treated in almost two years, none has given birth to an infected baby. "There is anecdotal evidence of one centre where 80 of these women, treated during pregnancy, had babies born without the virus."
Anonymous testing of pregnant women has shown the Irish national average is one pregnant woman in 21,000 being HIV positive. But Dr Butler said she believed that average was now rising and she was seeing more instances outside Dublin, in places such as Cork and Galway.