WAYS TO ELIMINATION OF MOTHER-TO-CHILD TRANSMISSION OF HIV
Authors: Kozyrina N. V. , Ladnaya N. N. , Narsia R. S. 
Published: September 2019

Aim. The article addresses the progress in elimination of mother-to-child transmission of HIV in the Russian Federation. The authors reviewed the available data on the current situation and identified opportunities to reduce the risk of mother-to-child transmission of HIV. Materials and methods. The basic HIV statistics for 2017 from the federal public health watchdog Rospotrebnadzor and the Russia's ministry of health were analysed. The findings included several important aspects. Results. In 2017, women constituted a substantial proportion of population living with HIV, both among all cases and among new HIV infections (37%-38%). The number of new HIV cases among women was growing every year and by 2017 increased 62% compared to 2010. In 28 regions of the Russian Federation, more than 1% of pregnant women were HIV positive. Across the whole monitoring period (from 1987), 177,663 pregnancies complicated by HIV infection and ended in delivery were registered in Russia by the end of 2017, including 14,969 such pregnancies in 2017 alone. In 2017, 91.0% of pregnant women living with HIV took ART during pregnancy, 94.7% received it in labour. 98.7% of new-borns were given antiretroviral therapy as prevention. However, a three-stage chemoprophylaxis was provided to only 89.1% of mother-child pairs. It was revealed that 1,635 motherchild pairs (10.9%) missed at least one of prevention stages. The main reason for incomplete prevention was the late diagnosis of HIV infection in mothers. The viral load before delivery was not suppressed in 25.8% of HIV-positive pregnant women whose pregnancies were completed in 2017 (2,527 women were tested for viral load and 1,342 did not take antiretroviral drugs during pregnancy). 708 children born to HIV-positive mothers were diagnosed HIV positive in 2017 of whom, however, only 235 were born that year. Calculations showed that in 2017 the risk of vertical HIV transmission amounted to 2.3%, which were 348 new-born babies. A significant number of children (35,579 born in different years) did not undergo a final HIV test. 3.9% of all HIV-infected children born to HIV-positive women had contracted HIV through breastfeeding. There was also a trend towards increasing the number of HIV transmissions this way. The article reveals that in the cohort of children born women, the death rate is higher. So in 2017 mortality among infants born to HIV-positive mothers was 1.5 times higher, while perinatal mortality was twice as high as in the general population. Conclusion. The study showed that in order to improve the situation concerning vertical transmission of HIV, it is necessary to solve a number of tasks related to low threshold programmes aimed at access to surveillance, treatment and retention in care for women, especially those of at-risk of HIV. The ways to achieve the goal are early infant HIV diagnosis in first two months of new-borns' life, urgent final laboratory examination of older children exposed to HIV at birth, determination and elimination of factors leading to increased infant mortality, breast-feeding counselling, as well as improvements in statistical methods.