Every year, 230,000 children are spared from HIV thanks to treatments that reduce mother-to-child transmission

It’s hard to imagine many things that are more terrifying than your baby contracting HIV. This is the reality for around 130,000 families every year.

Just a few decades ago, this figure was over half a million. Most of these infections were passed on from mothers who had HIV themselves.

But the introduction of anti-retroviral (ART) drugs and other interventions has meant that most infections can be prevented. If the mother takes ART during pregnancy, it dramatically reduces the risk of passing on HIV. In some cases, giving ART to the baby in the first few weeks of life can help too.

In the chart, you can see this decline in new HIV infections in children. On top, you can see the huge number of cases estimated to have been averted thanks to these interventions; they amount to almost a quarter of a million cases every year.

Explore more of our work on HIV/AIDS in adults and children →

Where this page came from

This page was imported from Our World in Data. “Every year, 230,000 children are spared from HIV thanks to treatments that reduce mother-to-child transmission” by Hannah Ritchie, published by Our World in Data under CC BY 4.0. Changed here: set as a page, its interactive charts shown as pictures. Data from third parties keeps its own licence.

Nobody has written it yet — it is the source material at a new address, which is why search engines are asked to skip it and why no one earns from it. It is up for grabs: take it on, and it is yours to rewrite and to earn from.