The Transmission Of HIV To Children

HIV is said to progress much faster in children than in adults

There have been reports of Aids diseases affecting small children since 1982. Among four children reported to have HIV, three were black and black people were most strongly affected.

In 1987, they were proportionally 16 times more frequently infected with Aids than pale-skinned children in the USA, whilst Hispanic children were eight times more frequently infected.

43% of Aids diseases which were ascribed to blood-transfusions affect black and Hispanic children in the USA. Therefore, 2.5 more frequently than pale-skinned children, these children were treated with blood-transfusions containing HIV.

Children of HIV-infected mothers are born without HIV

A transfer of HIV from mothers to children in the mother's body, during birth and allegedly through the mother's milk, occurs in roughly 12.9% of newborn children of infected mothers.

The most detailed study which produced this result involved an examination of 600 children from infected mothers. To a large extent, they lived usually in poor conditions.

More than 20% of the children adopted, 80% of the mothers took intravenous drugs; 28% of children suffered from heroin-withdrawal symptoms after birth. 1% had congenital infections of the brain, 24% were born by Cesarean section.

If the health problems of the mother promote the transmission of HIV in the fetus, then the 12.9% are high above-average figures. If the 12.9% of the children in one country is infected, all the mothers must be infected with HIV.

If 10% of pregnant women are infected, then a maximum of 1.29% of the children could become infected. If 1% of pregnant women are infected, then only 0.129% of children from one country can be infected.

Although this study repudiates all the previous conjectures and reports of more than 30% to more than 70% of transmission, similar high transmission rates are nonetheless mentioned, today.

Even midwives are excluded as receivers respectively virus-sources. There was not a single report in the whole world of any midwife suffering from HIV-infection.

Midwives questioned in Arua, Uganda, maintained that they were unaware of any colleague being infected. They work without gloves. (Personal communication, June 1991.)

HIV-infected children even though the mothers are not infected

Even before the study, dealing with the transmission of the disease from the mother to a child was published, there were, according to the first unambiguous examples from the USA, hundreds of HIV-infected babies whose mothers were not infected.

HIV transmitted to children through injections, blood-transfusions, insects, and food

The infection of children at the Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami must certainly have been through injections, whilst in the Central African Republic probably by insects.

In Burundi, it was through food and in Tanzania through insects. In Romania, 1345 children up to the age of 12, mostly from children's homes and orphanages, were infected by giving them small transfusions from infected batches of stored blood which had been split up and distributed around.

In Brazil, street children were deliberately infected with Aids in the state-run social departments. The treatment of malaria with blood-transfusions plays a major part in HIV-infection of children in Kinshasa.