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 Health & Beauty | July 2005 
Kids At Risk From HIV Virus
 Ruth Rodríguez - El Universal
The problem of children born with the HIV virus is more prevalent among the nation's indigenous population than in the larger society, say non-governmental health organizations.
Because women in indigenous communities do not always have access to good health care, say the activists, those who are HIV-positive are often unaware of their infection.
Furthermore, a lack of medicine in rural areas prevents infected mothers from protecting their unborn and newborn babies against transmission.
According to directors at La Casa de la Sal, an organization that provides housing and care for HIV-infected children, another problem arises in caring for indigenous or poor children who carry the virus from birth. In order to prevent the virus from causing an AIDS infection, a child must take a battery of 20 to 30 pills per day, and that regimen can carry a high price tag.
La Casa de la Sal, which already cares for children from Chiapas, Puebla, Oaxaca and Guerrero whose parents have died from AIDS, is in the midst of a fundraising effort to open Latin America's first clinic for HIV-positive adolescents.
The clinic is expected to open in 2006.
Statistics from health agencies say that some 400 children are born HIV-positive each year in Mexico. |
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