What population-based strategies can promote breastfeeding and minimize HIV transmission?
Promote safer sexual behavior. The best way of protecting children from HIV is to help women avoid HIV infection. Most infection is through unprotected sexual intercourse. The risk of infection can be lowered by decreasing the number of sexual contacts, reducing the number of partners, and using condoms. Methods of protection that women themselves can control are urgently needed. Treating and preventing other sexually transmitted diseases can also help decrease the risk of HIV transmission. Improving the economic and social conditions of women and girls also would reduce their vulnerability to coercive and other unsafe sexual situations. Provide universal access to voluntary and confidential HIV testing and counseling for both men and women. At present, access to HIV testing is generally low, yet many of the strategies proposed for reducing mother-to child transmission assume that the mother’s HIV status is known. Even where testing is available, mothers often do not want to know their
