Tuesday, November 19, 2002

Nursing mother refused option of pumping breast milk "Arcom Publishing Inc. - Fauquier Times-Democrat


By Bill McIntyre November 12, 2002


Wearing a clean white one-piece pajama sleeper, Marsh Run's 8-week-old Victoria Lynn Boutwell has become the center of attention in a controversy between criminal justice officials and a recently incarcerated nursing mother.
Sporting a shock of curly black hair, a curious smile and a pair of attentive dark brown eyes, little Victoria Lynn rests comfortably in her father's arms while she fusses over her nighttime bottle of Enfamil formula. ...
Boutwell delivered a breast pump to the Warrenton Detention Center for Moore, but medical officials there disallowed its use.
"I called to make sure she got the breast pump and that's when the nurse told me that the doctor said she was not entitled to it because she was incarcerated," he said.
Dr. David Fairbanks, who operates a family practice in Warrenton, was hired by county officials to provide medical services at the Warrenton jail twice a week.
Invoking doctor-patient confidentiality, he declined to discuss Moore's case specifically, but explained that breast pumping would be allowed if it were the only means available for providing nutrition to a baby.
"But formula is cheap and half of America was fed on formula since the '60s and we've all done OK with it," he said.
Fairbanks added that part of his job was to protect the county from potential litigation.
"We just can't afford it. You would hate to have something go wrong with the milk (opening the county to potential lawsuits)," he said...."

[This woman is now in another jail where she is allowed to pump and she is trying to re-lactate. - JC]
Health24 - News Pioneers join to fight Aids
November 19, 2002
Two pioneers in Aids research who had fallen out bitterly over the discovery of the virus which causes the disease announced that they had joined forces to devise a trial vaccine.

The scheme, announced at a meeting in the capital of the West African state of Cameroon, brings together Luc Montagnier of France and Robert Gallo of the United States, who were jointly credited with identifying the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

Making the vaccine a top priority for Africa
Gallo said the two had devised a candidate vaccine against HIV, clinical trials for which could start in the next 18 months.

"If it works, I swear I'll do everything I can to make it a top priority for Africa," he said.

In the nearly two decades since HIV was identified as the cause of a fatal disease of the immune system, the quest for a vaccine has been a notoriously neglected area.

No vaccine past phase-three trials yet
Numerous trial vaccines have been put to clinical trial, the term for testing them on human volunteers to see whether they are safe and effective.

But none has so far cleared the three-phase procedure and is on public release.

Only one - AIDSVAX - has so far made it to the Phase III stage, for testing on a large batch of volunteers, and its results are expected in the first quarter of next year.

Another vaccine hopeful, a combination of AIDSVAX and ALVAC-HIV, made by Aventis Pasteur of France, is being launched in Thailand later this year among 16 000 volunteers.

Preventing mother-to-child transmission
Montagnier told the meeting that he and Gallo were also working on a vaccine to help reduce risk of HIV transmission from infected mothers to their babies via breast milk.

The vaccine could be added to the tuberculosis jab, he hoped.
allAfrica.com -- Nigeria: HIV Risk Increases With Prolonged Breastfeeding - Study HIV Risk Increases With Prolonged Breastfeeding - Study

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Vanguard (Lagos)
November 19, 2002
Posted to the web November 19, 2002

Sola Ogundipe


HIV-positive nursing mothers and their infants who are placed on anti-retroviral drugs for a short time can produce levels of mother-to-child HIV transmission as low as six per cent, but about 20 per cent of such infants are eventually infected if breastfed over a prolonged length of time.

This was the outcome of a randomized trial conducted among 1,797 pregnant women living with HIV in Tanzania, South Africa, and Uganda. In the trial, published in Lancet, three oral drug regimens using zidovudine and lamivudine to prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission (MTCT) were compared. One group of women received the two common antiretroviral drugs before, during, and after delivery. The second group received the regimen during an after delivery. Infants of mothers in these first two groups also received the drugs, a third group of women received the drugs only after delivery and a fourth group was given a placebo.