Strategic innovations will help prevent HIV transmission from mothers to children, high-level meeting attendees state

At a High-Level Meeting on Innovation for Elimination of Mother to Child Transmission (EMTCT) on Friday in Washington, D.C., "HIV experts, business leaders, aid agencies and ambassadors of 22 priority countries -- home to 90 percent of new HIV infections among children --" agreed that strategic innovations are necessary to curb the spread of the virus from women to their children, PANA/Afrique en Linge reports. "The priority countries are Angola, Botswana, Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, Cote d'Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe," the news service notes.

Attendees included representatives of UNAIDS and PEPFAR, "which together co-chair the Global Steering Group on EMTCT," according to the news service (4/21). "The April meeting is to be followed by a leadership forum on 'Innovation for the Elimination of Mother to Child Transmission' on 22 July in Washington, D.C., which will showcase technologies and approaches by individual countries to accelerate results, especially within the most disadvantaged communities," a UNICEF Mozambique article notes (4/20).