EcoWorldly

It is Olympics season and every video house in this farming town is full with home fans following the athletics races in Beijing that their local heroes are featuring.

Eldoret is the bread basket of Kenya’s athletics elite and famous runners, including Kipchoge Keino who made history by winning the east African country’s first gold medal in the 1500 meters run at the Mexico City Games.

But the town is also home to Hanna Jeruto, a 24 year old HIV+ mother who exclusively breastfeeds her 4 month old son, Kipruto. Kipruto, however, is HIV negative and when she was delivering at the provincial hospital doctors had advised her not to breastfeed him.

• » Read more on Africa

The baby underwent prophylactic medication immediately after birth to safeguard from possible infection from the mother, as all babies born to HIV+ mothers at Africa’s public health facilities do without cost to the parent.

Hanna tells me she was aware of the infection risks but had defied the breastfeeding instructions from the hospital anyway. For nearly a decade now, United Nations AIDS had advised that women infected with HIV should consider feeding formula instead of breast milk to their babies.

Three million children or more have died from AIDS since the epidemic began, many of whom received the virus from the milk in their mothers’ breasts. This leaves formula as the safer and next best option.

Now two separate studies in Africa appear to vindicate Hanna’s stance, and her son is still a very healthy baby boy and may be an Olympics pedigree if the athletics reputation of his hometown is anything to go by.

But she is not alone. Some 30% of HIV+ mothers under antiretroviral medication in developing nations are believed to totally disregard the inherent dangers involved with breastfeeding.

The first study, conducted in Malawi found that adding 14 weeks of treatment with nevirapine to the standard therapy — one dose of nevirapine plus a week of treatment with AZT — halved the infection rate at 9 months to 5.2%, reported The New England Journal of Medicine.

The second, conducted in Zambia, found that exclusively breastfeeding the baby had significant benefits. 68% of the babies monitored in the study and who were breastfed by their HIV+ mothers for the first 14 weeks of life remained uninfected at 2 years of age.

Among 477 Zambian women who were encouraged to breastfeed as long as they wanted, the virus-free survival rate was about the same – 64%.

This prompted the conclusion by the researchers that it was crucial to exclusively breastfeed the baby and give the baby antiretroviral drugs for at least 14 weeks without much the risk of mother to child infection.

HIV researcher, Prof Ruth Nduati, of the University of Nairobi, said: “It has been concluded that the safest way is for the mothers to feed their babies on nothing but breast milk for the first six months, while they (the mothers) are on ARVs.”

“The child is also required to be on prophylactic drugs which work to prevent infection, should the baby be exposed to the virus. We can finally protect infants.”

Image credit: Raphael Goetter at Flickr under a Creative Commons license

You might also like:

The Bias and Logical Fallacies of Christopher Booker’s ‘Freezing Heat’

51 Countries to Form International Agency Promoting Renewable Energy

Reports Show Less Water Used In Organic Farming

Happy Harvest from EcoWorldly!