Mandatory HIV/AIDs testing for Pregnant Woman

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Mandatory HIV /AIDS testing for Pregnant Woman

Today , anti retroviral therapies are being developed by several manufacturers , in a bid to finally be able to reduce the number of instances of the transmission of HIV from mother to child . The drug AZT for example , has been successful at bringing the rate of such direct transmissions down , and this has given rise to a widespread feeling that if testing of pregnant women for the presence of the dreaded AIDS virus were

to be made mandatory , then perhaps many lives could be saved . It must be remembered that before the year 1994 , when AIDS became renowned for its impact on the human body , not much was known about the disease often referred to as `the scourge of modern man , and nothing at all was known about the transmission of this disease from a mother to her unborn child

It was in late 1994 that an American clinical trial known as `ACTG 076 ' was able to prove the assumption that when a drug AZT was administered to a HIV positive pregnant woman , and also to her child immediately after its birth , it was able to lower the rate of transmission from a high of 25 to a low of 8 . The trial was based on the fact that the pregnant woman had to be given the drug during her pregnancy , during her labor , during her delivery , and for the newborn baby during his first six weeks of life . Immediately after the results of this trial were published , the US Public Health Service recommended that all HIV positive pregnant women must be given the drug , especially to those women who demonstrated a likelihood of developing the disease This was to include women who had never taken drugs of any kind against HIV AIDS . The administration of the drug , of course , involved an invasion of the woman 's basic privacy , and this was something that created a stir at the time . Such invasion of privacy was not to be tolerated (Yovetich

As stated earlier , making HIV testing mandatory for a pregnant woman , in the hope that the woman 's unborn child could be given a better and more productive and disease free life was not as simple an issue as it may have sounded at the time . There was much opposition from several different quarters . The main reason for the opposition was that the woman 's private life would be exposed , as HIV was a disease that was clothed in much secrecy , and it still is today . Defenders of privacy of a human being fought a long war to oppose mandatory testing of all pregnant women for the dreaded AIDS /HIV virus . To test a woman against her will , and then inform her that she had AIDS , and that she must take the drug so that her unborn child would not develop the disease would be a rather intrusive method to follow , felt privacy defenders , even...