Mandatory Prenatal HIV Testing Essay

Women are routinely offered a variety of genetic screening tests during their first three months of pregnancy to evaluate the risk for genetic disorders in their unborn baby. Parents are most likely to consider abortion if the test comes out positive for genetic disorders such as Down Syndrome, and Cystic Fibrosis. This option has prompted many strong ethical and moral debates. Firstly, prenatal screening is often seen as a practice that is used to avoid giving birth to a disabled child, and thus, relieving the expectant parents of the (perhaps undesired) responsibility of providing additional, demanding and longer term care. Secondly, the majority of parents consider abortion when the test comes out positive, because they believe that people with genetic disorders would suffer for lifetime, however they could fulfill their lives just like everyone else. Lastly prenatal testing has a great chance of giving false positive, which is most likely lead to an abortion murdering an innocent healthy baby.

Christine Le, an accountant living in Flushing, New York, gave birth to a healthy baby “Nathan” on January 29th, 2010. She found out that she was pregnant with her first child when her period was late. She had the routine prenatal care starting at 12 weeks and delivered at 40 weeks in a hospital with the present of her husband, Robert, and the in-laws. To insure her baby was healthy, Christine underwent several prenatal diagnostic methods like amniocentesis to examine for genetic defects. Another method was ultrasound; its purpose is to assess fetal age, multiple pregnancies, size and shape of the fetus. Christine underwent numerous lab tests to ensure that there are no complications (Berk, pg.43). Lab tests like a complete blood count that screens

HIV is a life changing virus that cannot be reversed. It can be spread by “semen, vagina fluids, breast milk, or amniotic fluid”. This virus is a vicious virus that harms and fights the body immune system. The immune system is the body’s healing system that fights off diseases. With a weak immune system, one is more likely to become infected with diseases and illnesses. There is treatment to help aid the symptoms of HIV, but unfortunately there is no prevention vaccine for HIV.

The study was done using a prospective approach. HIV-infected women on zidovudine in 10 clinical centers were examined, and their children followed up thereafter. The follow-up was extended to a period of two years. Control of the study was women on ARV regimen excluding nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors. From the study, the researchers concluded the following findings; among those exposed to zidovudine in the first trimester,

Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) diagnoses are increasing among women in the United States; as a result there is an increase in newborns born with HIV via vertical transmission, accounting for nearly all pediatric AIDS cases in the US. Between 1999 and 2000, about 370 HIV infected infants were born, 40% of which were born to mothers who were unaware of their HIV status before delivery. Without antiretroviral therapy or other forms of intervention, 25% of infected pregnant women will transmit the virus to their child during pregnancy, labor or delivery, or after delivery. In recent years, systematic reviews and peer reviewed studies have suggested that mandatory screening for HIV in pregnant women is a cost-effective

Amesh A. Adalja, M.D., a board-certified infectious disease physician at the University of Pittsburgh and an affiliated scholar at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Health Security, tells SELF that this expansion will make it nearly impossible for global HIV/AIDS providers to be able to inform their clients of all of their options. “If someone becomes pregnant when they’re HIV-positive, you need to be able to talk about what the options are,” he says. “When you inject something like the global gag rule into it, you’re automatically walling off certain avenues of discussion, and that makes it difficult to provide comprehensive care.”

This research trial has been tested on several children. After the HIV entered their body, they became very sick. High fever, trouble breathing, and even blood pressure issues. After several days not knowing if the patient would survive, a miracle had happened. One patient showed full remission of the leukemia. That patient is doing fine and well and living a full life.

From the first research on Research on uptake, use and effectiveness of PrEP for HIV negative persons with partners living with HIV, the following is a summary is a summary of the results obtained. Descriptive statistics was used to summarize the traits of the couples and trends of PrEP use. The total number of couples that were deployed for this study were n=1010. A considerable number of couples showed characteristics that were in line with having a high risk of HIV transmission, that is, 41%(n=414)of the couples living with HIV/AIDS had plasma HIV RNA concentration of >50000copies/ml and 65%(n=657) reported to having not used condoms during sex in the previous months.

Another factor that adds to my position is the cost for which these tests are ran. Humane Society International did a study that showed the federal government spends over 14 billion dollars of the taxpayers’ money annually on vivisection (the practice of performing operations on live animals for the purpose of experimentation on

HIV can be prevented from limiting the number of sexual partners you have and not sharing needles when performing injections. Post-exposure prophylaxis, or PEP, is a type of medication that can be taken to prevent the infection of HIV if a person thinks that they may have been exposed to the virus on recent occasions. Keeping cuts or sores covered is a way to prevent the exposure to HIV because HIV can be transmitted through open wounds. Always make sure that the hospital or clinic performing a blood transplant or transfusion had tested the blood for HIV before going in for the operation, as HIV can be spread through blood. Mothers should never feed their child breast milk if they are infected with the HIV virus due to the fact that children can catch the virus through breast milk.

According to Sontag (1989) in her book “Aids and Its Metaphors,” HIV stands for Human Immunodeficiency Virus. HIV has been classified as a virus because” it cannot grow or reproduce on its own, it needs to infect cells of a living organism in order to replicate themselves.” The human immune

Prevention of mother to child transmission of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) (PMTCT) has been a documented burden on HIV infected expectant mothers and their infants and nowhere is such a burden more felt than in areas with limited resources – particularly in low income countries and communities (3,4). Once a woman becomes pregnant, HIV screening is strongly recommended. Upon screening and being identified as HIV positive, it is advised that the mother begin a lifetime regime of antiretroviral therapy (ART), as without ART, HIV transmission from mother to child is between 15% - 45% (3,4). The prophylactic use of ART in the prenatal and postpartum stages is crucial in preventing transmission of the virus from mother to child during labour and while breastfeeding (11). It is also crucial that the newborn be treated with ART for at least six weeks or longer if the infant is being breastfed (11).

Mixed emotions come along when you find out you are expecting a baby- happiness, and amazement but also a concern. Will the baby be healthy? This is probably the number one concern most of us have in mind. Technology has advanced so much that we can now take a simple blood test to attempt to ease some of the fear we carry when it comes to our baby’s health. We can analyze DNA of a fetus through a pregnant woman’s bloodstream, in which these test can identify various genetic differences before birth. Prenatal testing can give you peace of mind knowing your baby is developing normally or if you need to take further precautionary steps.

This study is a prospective, special exposure cohort study. The study population will include HIV seropositive pregnant women, postpartum women within 6 weeks after delivery (due to the fact that most HIV-infected pregnant women do not usually come back for postpartum visits after delivery), and infants of seropositive pregnant women till 6 months old in Gambia. The study will be conducted in three years. The prevalence of HIV among women in Gambia is higher (7.6 per 1000) than other West African countries (3.1 per 1000). Our eligibility criteria include reproductive ages of women from 15-45 years old, HIV seropositive pregnant women, and participants from the three regions of Brikama, Janjanbureh, and Basse In Gambia (unicef, 2013). We intend recruiting 224~250 participants, based on the sample size calculation below (to accommodate potential losses to follow ups), nationwide in urban hospital clinics from the largest antenatal centers in Gambia (Please send me the correct link [2]). An informed consent will be obtained and signed by participants. Afterwards, a detailed questionnaire about their demographic variables, physical examination findings, HIV staging, and mode of delivery, breastfeeding and laboratory tests will be performed (Lambert et al., 1997). The specimen will be collected and stored, and the women will be seen on subsequent antenatal or postnatal visits for follow up. The selection

The National Screening Unit (NSU) was established in 2001. It is an organisation that provides health screening programmes in New Zealand by providing services to people and diagnosing the health issues in order to reassure they are healthy. National Screening Unit divide people into two category; the population who are prone of having any disease (positive screening result) and those who do not have any chance of acquiring a disease (negative screening result) (NSU, 2014). The screening unit programme reveals some conditions and then there is chance to diminish developing any disease or to save someone from dying. National Screening Unit provides services through their five programmes and one quality improvement initiative programme to people. Firstly, the Antenatal HIV Screening (NSU, 2014). The programme is not meant for women who are diagnosed with HIV but the women who are suspected to have the disease to minimise the chance of transferring the virus to the foetus. The main objective is to guarantee that women are offered HIV screening along with their first pregnancy so that transmission of virus can be counteracted. According to New Zealand AIDS Foundation (NZAF) the people can take advantage of their services like free counselling, HIV prevention through information dissemination. Secondly, the Antenatal Screening for Down Syndrome and other conditions-quality improvement which gather information