Protecting Women and Children Against HIV, by Carla Bruni-Sarkozy

Today, World AIDS Day, is one day when HIV and AIDS do not sit in the shadow of seemingly more important or more urgent issues. I write to express my deep concern specifically for women and children affected by HIV and AIDS, as it is still women and children who are most affected by, and vulnerable to, this disease.

It is important to remember that 430,000 children were born with HIV in 2008, mostly in underdeveloped and developing countries. For nearly all of them, this means an early and painful death. This is a sobering fact, especially when we consider that transmission of HIV from mothers to children has been practically eliminated in Europe and North America.

We must ensure that these disparities end. No mother needs to die from AIDS and no child should be born with HIV anywhere in the world. In September, at the United Nations, I suggested that we all join UNAIDS in calling for the virtual elimination of mother-to-child transmission by 2015 as a key step towards achieving the health Millennium Development Goals – we can do this. These are goals that are achievable, that accelerate the pace of our efforts, and that will not only help us to save lives from AIDS but, as we increasingly see, will benefit maternal and child health more widely.

Only a few years ago, this goal was more a dream than a realistic target. Then less than one in ten women who needed them received the drugs that would help her protect her child from HIV infection. But thanks to large investments through the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and great efforts by Unicef, UNAIDS and other organizations, as well as the work of thousands of health workers around the globe,  the World Health Organization’s most recent estimates show that in 2008, 45% of HIV-positive pregnant women globally were receiving the necessary treatment to prevent transmission of HIV to their babies.  Global Fund-financed programs can increase this figure to 60% within little more than a year, getting us ready for a final push to reach all women with HIV by 2015.

Burkina Faso, where I travelled earlier this year, is showing what can be done.  In one of the poorest countries in the developing world, I met HIV-positive mothers with their healthy babies.  I met pregnant women waiting for the results of their HIV tests or to receive preventive AIDS treatment.  I met doctors and nurses who no longer felt like helpless bystanders in the AIDS epidemic but had become healers now that they have the tools they need.

If it can be done in Ouagadougou, there is no reason why the same cannot happen in Nairobi, in Lima, in Phnom Penh and Bangalore, as well.  We can truly end transmission of HIV from mothers to their children.

I am not a doctor, a researcher, or a politician.  I am simply a mother moved by the injustice of a world where the knowledge and medications exist to prevent transmission of HIV and deaths from AIDS, and yet millions of people still become infected and die.

My wish is that we will be able to tell our grandchildren that we did everything we could to stop children everywhere from being born with HIV.  Let us be able to say that justice was done. Let us be able to say that millions of children grew up with the love of their parents because AIDS treatment for these parents was available, and that this happened because we finally decided to act with the focus and urgency that every mother and child deserve.

Carla Bruni-Sarkozy is Ambassador for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, for the protection of mothers and children against AIDS.