breast feeding with HIV infected mother

by bijaya shrestha
(nepal)

As we all know HIV is transmitted through breast milk, so to reduce the chance of transmitting HIV infection, and to protect the baby from other infection, mother's breast milk can be modified.

There are different methods of breast feeding to reduce HIV infection:

- exclusive breast feeding with early weaning
- heat treated method
- wet nursing
There are some advantages and disadvantages of these methods.


In exclusive breast feeding with early weaning, the mother can only breast feed until three month, then she can wean the baby.

In the heat treated method, the mother can boil the expressed breast milk, but one should know that milk should be brought just to boil.

The other method the expressed breast is dipped into the boiled water for 15 minutes.