By IANS
Buenos Aires : The number of babies born in Argentina with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, has fallen by 75 percent in the past 10 years.
The Spanish news agency EFE quoted Clarin newspaper as saying that the figures indicate that in the mid-1990s some 400 children were born each year with HIV, while the number now has dropped to about 100.
Some 3,000 children below the age of 14 who have AIDS live in Argentina, with about 55 percent living in the Buenos Aires metro area, 25 percent in Buenos Aires proper and the rest in the interior.
The head of the infectious diseases department at the Juan Garrahan Paediatric Hospital in Rosa Bologna said that HIV infection from mother to child did not occur in 100 percent of cases.
“If the mother is treated during pregnancy, the rate of transmission of the infection can be reduced to less than five percent,” Bologna said.
In Argentina, according to official figures, some 80 percent of pregnant women are tested for HIV.
The health ministry says 0.65 percent of Argentina’s 40 million people are infected with HIV.