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 | ![Rostropovich-Vishnevskaya Foundation]() | | | | Screening Pregnant Women for HIV/AIDS in Georgia Azerbaijan and Armenia | | Program Highlights: | | • | Goal: is to protect newborns from acquiring AIDS infection from their mothers through timely, aggressive medical intervention | | • | The entire cohort of pregnant women – approximately 50,000 women in Georgia,150,000 women in Azerbaijan and 19,000 women in the city of Yerevan in Armenia annually – are being screened for HIV/AIDS | | • | HIV-infected women receive appropriate antiretroviral treatment to interrupt transmission to their newborns | | | |
| The AIDS viruses can be passed from infected mothers to their newborns during the process of labor and delivery. Indeed, approximately 25% of HIV- infected women will transmit their infection if no preventative therapy is given laboring mothers and/or their babies. This prenatal transmission can be successfully |
|  | Screening can help prevent mother to child HIV transmission |
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| prevented if two conditions are met: 1) Pregnant women are identified as carriers before labor has begun; 2) Caesarian section is made and appropriate therapy is begun for carrier mothers and /or their offspring.
In October 2005, RVF began an ambitious nationwide program in Georgia to protect the vulnerable population of neonates from acquiring HIV/AIDS from their mothers. Based on the successful program in Georgia, RVF launched an HIV/AIDS screening program in Azerbaijan in early 2009 and in Armenia in 2010. Working collaboratively with the ministries of health in each country, the RVF has provided training and print materials to enable the country’s health care workers to perform rapid diagnostic screening for HIV/AIDS for the entire cohort of pregnant women. Women are tested at their first prenatal check-up. If rapid screening is positive, more extensive and definitive testing is performed at national testing centers. This definitive testing, funded by the MOH, identifies women who will receive effective antiretroviral treatment of HIV/AIDS (financed by the Global Fund) to prevent the transmission of the virus to their babies. Transmission rates are known to fall from 25% to less than 4% for HIV/AIDS when the program is successfully implemented. The RVF donated special surgical kits to maternity hospitals for the performance of Caesarian sections. As of March 30, 2010, 222,129 pregnant women had been screened for HIV in Georgia and 26,825 pregnant women had been screened for HIV in the city of Baku, Azerbaijan.
As with all RVF-supported programs, the HIV/AIDS screening program is implemented entirely through the existing public health infrastructure by local health care workers, so that from the very start the ministries of health and local healthcare workers have full ownership of the programs. The programs have been earmarked by the ministers of health for continued funding by government sources beginning in April 2010 in Georgia and in 2011 in Azerbaijan. The Armenian MOH will assume full financial responsibility by the end of 2011.This requirement of sustainability is an inherent part of all RVF programs.
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The Mission of the Vishnevskaya-Rostropovich Foundation (VRF) is to improve the health care of children in the Russian Federation and other Newly Independent States (NIS) of the former Soviet Union....
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