Madam, - I had a baby in Zimbabwe in 1999, during a year's stay there. One third of the mothers who gave birth that year in Zimbabwe have since died Aids-related deaths. So have one twelfth of the children. My son and I are in the privileged group who are HIV-free.
I didn't go through the agony of wondering if the precious baby I was sharing life with would also be sharing an early death - a death that could be prevented by the cost of a tank of petrol.
On World Aids Day let's stir ourselves to rise above our current orgy of self-pity and take on a challenge: that of preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV. An HIV-positive mother has a one in four risk of passing on HIV to her baby during the birth.
Triple-therapy anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) given to a mother for three-months onward from week 28 of her pregnancy reduce the risk from 25 per cent to 1 per cent. Neither mother nor baby is compromised by resistance to ARVs on this regime. The cost of the medication? Just €30 for the full course. - Yours, etc,