Touch is the first sense your baby develops, starting at week 7 of pregnancy. At birth, touch continues to play an important role in how infants understand the world and is the basis for proper development of communication, learning, self-regulation and social interaction. Its role is also crucial in the process of connecting your baby with its parents. At birth, premature babies are often separated from their parents, and their treatment continues in neonatal intensive care units for multidisciplinary and specialized treatment.

Preventing stigma and discrimination for children with HIV

The term ‘stigma’ is often used in the context of HIV. It means ‘sign’, ‘mark of shame’, ‘open wound’ and comes from the Greek ‘puncture’, ‘burn’ or ‘mark’.

HIV in children

The course of HIV infection in children is different from that in adults. This is due to the particular nature of children’s bodies and the immaturity of their immune system. The rapid development of severe immunodeficiency that brings various serious infections, should be considered the most important feature of HIV infection in young children.

Mother-to-child transmission of HIV

Children can become infected with HIV in utero during their mother's pregnancy, during childbirth and after birth through breastfeeding.

In the absence of preventive measures, the risk of an HIV-positive mother infecting her newborn is 15 to 30 per cent. If the mother is on antiretroviral therapy during pregnancy and breastfeeding, the risk of HIV transmission to her baby is very low.

Post-exposure prophylaxis of HIV

Post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) is a specific intervention implemented after possible exposure to HIV infection. Post-exposure prophylaxis is widely used in the health-care sector by health-care workers for “emergencies”. However, experts also recommend PEP after unsafe sex.

Post-exposure prophylaxis includes:

HIV symptoms in adults

In the first few weeks after infection, a person may have no symptoms or may develop a flu-like illness with fever, headache, skin rash or sore throat. For most people, the symptoms go away without treatment and HIV infection does not manifest itself in any way for several years. Some people can generally live for more than 10 years without symptoms, and a positive HIV test result may be discovered by chance during a doctor’s visit, for example before a planned operation.

HIV treatment

Antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) are used to treat HIV infection. ARVs do this by blocking the replication of the virus in the human body. They allow people with HIV to live longer, healthier and more productive lives. Also, a person living with HIV, who is on effective therapy, is no longer contagious.