Small Drug Pouch May Offer New Tool to Protect Newborns From HIV

This is the VOA Special English Development Report, from http://voaspecialenglish.com | http://facebook.com/voalearningenglishResearchers say they have found a way to extend the storage life of a drug used to treat H.I.V. Their work could give infected mothers in the developing world a new way to prevent the spread of the AIDS virus to their newborn babies. The drug is nevirapine. If it is given within seventy-two hoursafter birth, it can often protect babies from H.I.V. Researchers at Duke University in North Carolina have developed a small pouch made of foil and plastic. They say current tests show that the pouch can safely store the drug for as long as four months. But they expect that final results in Octoberwill show it can keep the liquid stable for up to twelve months. That way, H.I.V.-infected women could have plenty of time to get the pouch from a health care provider early in their pregnancy. Caroline Gamache is a biomedical engineer at Duke who worked on the project. She said many mothers in sub-Saharan Africa deliver their babies at home. They could receive this pouch early in their pregnancy when they have their first doctor's visit. Then they would have the medicine at the time of delivery. The drug company Boehringer Ingelheim developed nevirapine. It says one dose of the medicine given to mother and child prevents the spread of H.I.V. in more than fifty percent of cases. Boehringer Ingelheim has been working with the nonprofit organization PATH to offer a similar pouch for the past several years. The nevirapine is contained in a small dropper placed inside the pouch.They got the idea from health workers in Kenya. The workers had been putting the medicine into droppers, then wrapping the tube with tape, aluminum foil and plastic. PATH designed a foil pouch to hold a medicine dropper containing nevirapine. The drug is considered safe for up to two months in the dropper; thepouch itself is only for packaging protection.Adriane Burman is with the PATH office in Seattle, Washington. She says the pouch is an important tool for preventing the spread of H.I.V. from mother to child. She noted a United Nations report that in two thousand eight about four hundred thirty thousand babies were born with H.I.V. Nine out of ten were born in Africa. The report said nearly all the mother-to-child infections could have been prevented through interventions. And that's the VOA Special English Development Report.

(Adapted from a radio program broadcast 24May2010)