Another volley in the HIV and bf controversy.
Cynthia D. Payne, IBCLC
In the Berkshires of western Massachusetts

<<Boiling breast milk kills HIV say S. Africans

CAPE TOWN, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Boiling breast milk from a mother carrying the
human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) will prevent her passing the infection to
her baby, the South African Medical Research Council said on Wednesday.

``Tests have shown that all the HIV in the milk is killed when the milk is
heated to 56 to 63 degrees Centigrade for about 20 minutes,'' the council
said in its annual report.

``At these temperatures 80 percent of the antibodies and other nutrients are
preserved in the milk. So for virtually no expense an HIV-positive mother can
provide her baby with all the benefits of breast milk without exposing the
infant to HIV,'' it added.

The discovery makes nonsense of a major national row over the government's
refusal for the public health sector to give expensive antiretroviral drugs
to HIV-infected nursing mothers to prevent mother-to-child transmission.

South Africa has one of the highest rates of HIV/AIDS infections on the
continent which is at the heart of a global epidemic of the deadly Acquired
Immune Deficiency Syndrome.

Around one in 10 South Africans are infected with AIDS or its HIV precursor,
and an estimated 1,700 people are added to the list each day.

The government has begun negotiations with international drug companies to
bring down the price of antiretroviral drugs for pregnant women as the number
of orphans carrying the disease rises daily.

But there has been little effective progress to date in a row that has
threatened to sour relations between South Africa and the United States where
most of the drug firms have their headquarters. >>

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