Clinic aims to help HIV-positive women

Children born to HIV positive women don't have to suffer the same disease as their mothers. There are preventive measures, health officials say.

Mothers just need access to these options, said Dr. Echezona Ezeanolue, assistant professor of pediatrics and infectious disease at the University of Nevada School of Medicine.

Thanks to a $384,000 donation from a donor who wishes to remain anonymous, and a $1 million Ryan White Title II grant from the state of Nevada, Ezeanolue opened a clinic Tuesday specifically geared toward preventing infants from being born HIV positive.

The clinic is a cooperative effort between the school of medicine, Aid for AIDS of Nevada, UMC's Wellness Center and the Area Health Education Center of Southern Nevada. It is at 901 Rancho Lane, near University Medical Center.

"There are 485 women between the age of 14 and 45, childbearing age, living in Southern Nevada who are HIV positive,'' Ezeanolue said. "These HIV-positive women have the potential to get pregnant and give birth to HIV-positive infants. We don't want that to happen.''

The clinic has six examination rooms and offers access to an obstetrician, pediatrician, nutritionists and an adolescent counselor.

Free screenings for infants born to HIV positive women and medical care to HIV positive children and adolescents also are available.

Ezeanolue said the number of HIV infected persons between age 14 and 24 has increased by 80 percent in Southern Nevada in the last three years. He said the majority of HIV-positive women receive no medical attention.

"You don't need health insurance to get care here,'' he said.

Recent research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that perinatal transmission of HIV accounted for approximately 91 percent of all AIDS cases reported among U.S. children between 1985 and 2004.

Perinatal transmission means that a newborn child gets HIV from the birth mother during pregnancy, labor, delivery or through breast-feeding.

If the mother's HIV status is unknown, appropriate anti-retroviral therapy administered during pregnancy and labor -- and to the infant at least six weeks after delivery -- can reduce HIV occurrence to less than 1 percent, Ezeanolue said.

Overall there's a 30 percent chance an infant born to a HIV-positive woman will be infected, health officials say.

Ezeanolue said women who have high viral loads could decrease the chance HIV will be transmitted to their infants during birth by having Cesarean sections.

Mary Ellen Harrell, community health nurse manager for Southern Nevada Health District, said the agency began tracking HIV cases in 1981.

"We've always had women who are HIV-positive become pregnant and when they delivered their babies, their blood tests were positive. So we, or someone else, would follow that child for 18 months and in most cases the child would not end up HIV-positive,'' Harrell said.

"For a number of years that's exactly what happened, but in the past two years we haven't been so lucky. We have seen a number of pediatric HIV cases.''

Contact reporter Annette Wells at awells@reviewjournal.com or (702) 383-0283.