HIV+ Women Want a Baby
One quarter of women with HIV want pregnancy and motherhood in their future. This statistic was examined in a recent study which also showed that the age of the women who were diagnosed played a significant factor in their decision to become pregnant. Women who were diagnosed with HIV and were under 30 year of age were four times more likely to want a baby. Those over 30 were less likely to want pregnancy.
The study accentuates the need for doctors to be more aware of women’s emotional concerns in the face of what has now become a much longer survival rate among HIV+ patients. There are life decisions to be made by these women. It is also pressing now that 29 percent of all HIV infections in the US happen to women. The study also showed that 40 percent of HIV+ women under 30 chose to become pregnant.
Among the concerns for these women was the fear that their baby might be infected with the HIV virus. Antiretroviral medications during pregnancy and labor provide some prevention to this potential problem and newborns can also receive antiretroviral medications for the first six weeks of life. Caesarean section birth has also proven to reduce risk in some cases. All things considered, the risk of transmission can be reduced to only 1 percent with the proper care.
The most surprising finding for researchers was the fact that HIV+ women with a negative self-image about their disease were most likely to want a baby. Doctors would have predicted otherwise but later considered the fact that pregnancy brings positive self-image to women such as lots of attention and a feeling of being involved in something miraculous. The positive repercussions of being pregnant seemed to influence HIV+ women to want to find renewed hope through pregnancy.
Source: Ohio State University
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After reading this, I was very disappointed. I have worked for 15 years in South Africa trying to minimize HVI infection and treat people who are already infected.
Yes, I have found that women in South Africa at least still want a baby even though they have HIV. However, after being told the fact that they more than likely will have a HIV infected baby, they change their mind.
What needs to be done is either one of these options:
(1) Sterilize the HIV infected parent(s), with the point being that no more HIV babys can be born.
(2) Add HIV to the list of infections that a person must be free of if they are going to leave their country border, with the point being that this will localise the infection to that area / country
(3) Once points (1) and (2) are setup and in place, special hospitals exclusively for AIDS / HIV infected people should be setup and quarantined against the rest of the population.
(4) Anyone with HIV / AIDS is not to have sexual contact with anybody at all.
Harsh words, yes, but eventually the infection will mean most of the HIV infected people will die and the HIV epidemic will be at a manageable level in a few years.
Of course this will not just apply to South Africa but everywhere.
That sounds like a frightening totalitarian method, Dr. Love.