Chandigarh, November 30
HIV positive mothers will no longer have to wait for their infants to reach 18 months of age to find out if they too are carrying the human immunodeficiency virus.

In what can be called a World AIDS Day gift to millions of estimated HIV positive infants across the country that face risk of death and developmental delays due to late diagnosis, the Government of India is moving fast to implement the world’s most sophisticated direct HIV detection test for infants and save them from dying due to delayed detection. India will be the first country in south and Southeast Asia to introduce this test, mainly implemented in Africa till now.

Called DNA PCR (polymerase chain reaction), this effective facility uses dried blood spots from a baby to determine his HIV status by the time he is 8 weeks old. The process involves amplification of his DNA. The test is far ahead in technology to the usual HIV antibody test used till now. The latter gives no definitive results till the child is 18 month-old. But the new test saves precious time and prevents infant mortality as an infected child can be straightaway put on antiretroviral therapy (ART). Among all patients of HIV, children respond best to ART.

The move assumes significance as 2.9 per cent of the 2.47 million estimated HIV cases in India are children; further, HIV positive infants are the most vulnerable of HIV patients. Fifty per cent untreated infected children die by the time they are 2; 80 per cent die by the time they are 5.

But pediatric HIV detection will now change, with the health ministry procuring DNA PCR testing kits from Rouche, the only international firm marketing them. The kits are being validated for quality assurance at the National HIV/AIDS Research laboratory, Pune.