Boiling breast milk antidote to HIV — report

CAPE TOWN, OCT 4: Boiling breast milk from a mother carrying the Human Immuno Deficiency Virus (HIV) will prevent her passing the infectio...

CAPE TOWN, OCT 4: Boiling breast milk from a mother carrying the Human Immuno Deficiency Virus (HIV) will prevent her passing the infection to her baby, the South African Medical Research Council said on Wednesday.

"Tests have shown that all the HIV in the milk is killed when the milk is heated to 56 to 63 degrees centigrade for about 20 minutes," the council said in its annual report.

"At these temperatures 80 per cent of the antibodies and other nutrients are preserved in the milk. So for virtually no expense an HIV-positive mother can provide her baby with all the benefits of breast milk without exposing the infant to HIV," it added.

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The discovery makes nonsense of a major national row over the government’s refusal for the public health sector to give expensive anti-retroviral drugs to HIV-infected nursing mothers to prevent mother-to-child transmission.

South Africa has one of the highest rates of HIV/AIDS infections on the continent which is at the heart of a global epidemic of the deadly acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.

Around one in 10 South Africans are infected with AIDS orits HIV precursor, and an estimated 1,700 people are added to the list each day.

The government has begun negotiations with international drug companies to bring down the price of anti retroviral drugs for pregnant women as the number of orphans carrying the disease rises daily.

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But there has been little effective progress to date in a row that has threatened to sour relations between South Africa and the United States where most of the drug firms have their headquarters.