Maternal health and HIV: bridging the gap

摘要

The Women Deliver conference (Oct 18-20, London, UK) provides a long overdue opportunity to examine maternal health within the context of the AIDS pandemic. About half of people living with HIV are women, 63% of them in sub-Saharan Africa. The associations between maternal mortality and HIV are troubling: HIV-positive women are at 1-5-2 times greater risk of maternal mortality than HIV-negative women, and in the high-prevalence setting of southern Africa, AIDS has become the leading cause of maternal mortality. Evidence from Uganda shows that HIV-negative women are at greater risk of HIV infection during pregnancy. And yet, neither the field of maternal health nor that of HIV has paid adequate attention to the association between maternal mortality and HIV, and especially the rights and needs of HIV-positive pregnant women, despite repeated calls to do so#