§7651 Findings

Summary

Congress says about 2,000 children a day worldwide get HIV from their mothers. This can happen before birth, during labor and delivery, or through breastfeeding. Over 90 percent of these cases are in poor countries with little health care. Most of these infections can be stopped with the right medicines and public health steps. Certain antiretroviral drugs cut transmission by nearly 50 percent. If those drugs were widely available, up to 400,000 infections a year could be prevented. At a U.N. meeting in June 2001, the United States pledged to reduce infant infection rates by 20 percent by 2005 and by 50 percent by 2010. U.S. agencies like USAID and the CDC already fund prevention programs in low-resource countries and can expand them quickly with foreign governments and NGOs. Preventing mother-to-child spread can also lead to care and treatment for infected family members. Since the epidemic began, about 13,200,000 children under 15 have lost their mother or both parents to AIDS, and UNAIDS warned that number could double by 2010. About 10,300,000 young people ages 15–24 now live with HIV/AIDS, and half of new infections occur in that age group, especially among young women.