By IJEOMA UKAZU
Poor growth was among the first manifestations of HIV infection to be recognized in children, according to the World Health Organization, WHO.
The global health body also linked undernutrition as playing an important role in HIV-associated growth failure even in settings where food sources are adequate and readily accessible, dietary intake is lower in HIV Positive children than HIV-negative control children.
HIV infection when left untreated in children can lead to encephalopathy and in turn slow down the process of development in the child, the focal person, Paediatric Antiretroviral Treatment/Prevention of Mother-To-Children at the University of Calabar Teaching Hospital, Dr. Ewa Atana has said.
Atana added that Health workers have also been called upon to ensure every pregnant woman is tested during antenatal care, stressing that the testing should also go beyond breastfeeding and continue even after the infant has been weaned.
She said, studies have shown that over 3,000 Nigerian babies tested positive for the disease between 2017 and 2020.
To reduce this, Atana stated that health workers across Nigeria have also been encouraged to ensure that they incorporate HIV testing into every care plan in various facilities as this would eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV.
Sharing a client’s story on the effect of HIV on a child’s development, she said, “I had a client who at some point was not doing so well in school and the parents were worried about the child’s slow pace of learning and understanding. In addition to that, the child was always ill and brought into the facility often, needing all kinds of medical care.
“This client is always out of school due to frequent illness and it only took a HIV test for us to understand what the root cause of all this was. A test was run and the status of the child ascertained as positive for HIV, it was discovered that the infant had developed HIV-related encephalopathy which affects the child’s development.
“Immediately the child was placed on treatment, there was an improvement, the child didn’t have to miss classes again because of other ailments. And since then, the child has been doing absolutely well in academics.”
The medical consultant said, HIV infection when left untreated in children can lead to encephalopathy and in turn slow down the process of development in the child affected.
Dr. Atana pointed out the mode of transmission of HIV in children is through: mothers, during delivery, breastfeeding or even after delivery, stating that development is a major concern in the management of the disease in infants.
Contributing, the assistant director of the National Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission, MTCT of HIV, Dr. Gbenga Ijaodola said a from National AIDS and STIs Control Programme has said, that two percent of babies born in Nigeria in 2020 tested positive for HIV/AIDs.
Ijaodola stated this at a three-day workshop organized by UNICEF in collaboration with the Child Rights Information Bureau of the ministry of information with an aim to reinvigorate and produce a work plan for Journalists Alliance for PMTCT in Nigeria, JAPiN in Calabar.
Giving further details, he stated, “The report show that in 2020; 27,909 infant DNA samples were tested, 19,715 were tested and 409 babies results came out positive and in 2019; 26,247 infant DNA samples were collected, 19,947 were tested and 833 were positive.
In 2018, a total of 22,977 infant DNA samples were collected, 17,488 were tested and 808 positive results were recorded while in 2017, a total of 19,927 infant DNA samples were collected, 16,272 samples were tested and 1,359 samples came out positive.”
Lamenting the results from the report,
Ijaodola said a large number of these babies contracted the virus mostly because their mothers failed to access facilities for antenatal care and ended up either delivering at home or other birthing locations.
More work needs to be done to encourage women, he said the Federal Ministry of Health is collaborating with partners to identify key stakeholders who focus on encouraging women to go out for testing.
“Stakeholders are working together with the ministry to ensure the women present their babies at facilities to undergo HIV testing at birth, and after six weeks for a retest of both positive and negative newborns.”
Revealing, Ijaodola added that while some babies might not exhibit symptoms of HIV infection until after four years of their life, there is a need to activate a scale-up of the plans on ground to capture a longer period of children’s lives.
He pointed out that children could be captured and retested for the virus during; immunisation, nutrition visits and when they are taken to facilities for different service delivery.
Recently, the global community marked World AIDS Day, a UNICEF report says at least 300,000 children were newly infected with HIV in 2020, or one child every two minutes. Another 120,000 children died from AIDS-related causes during the same period, or one child every five minutes globally.
Alarmingly, two in five children living with HIV worldwide do not know their status, and just over half of children with HIV are receiving antiretroviral treatment, ART.
The latest HIV and AIDS Global Snapshot warns that a prolonged COVID-19 pandemic is deepening the inequalities that have long driven the HIV epidemic, putting vulnerable children, adolescents, pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers at increased risk of missing life-saving HIV prevention and treatment services.