More than 40 per cent of the 700,000 infants who contract HIV each year do so from prolonged breastfeeding.
As a result, the World Health Organisation recommends that HIV-positive mothers avoid breastfeeding if they have access to safe alternatives.
For many women in developing countries where infant formulas are inaccessible and clean water is rare, however, breastfeeding continues to be the only viable option of preventing higher infant mortality rates due to diarrhoael diseases and other infections. In many African communities, cultural and traditional pressures also make it imperative for a mother to breast-feed.
According to the WHO, the risk of an infant contracting HIV from breast-milk is 3 to 4 per cent, but this rises substantially if the baby is given others foods in addition to breast-feeding.
Where infant formulas are not available, the WHO recommends that HIV-positive mothers exclusively breast-feed their infants for six months, then wean them completely and start them on other foods without mixing the two.
"We conducted this research to help HIV-positive mothers and their infants who do not have safe alternatives to breastfeeding," said Kiersten Israel-Ballard, a doctoral candidate at Berkeley's School of Public Health who led the study into the new method.
According to Dr Israel-Ballard, in addition to deactivating HIV, flash-heating breast milk can kill bacteria while retaining most of the milk's nutritional and antimicrobial properties.
Source: Nation Media
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