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Efforts to promote breast milk substitutes as an alternative to breastfeeding for HIV-positive mothers in Uganda have failed, a public health official has said.
Prof Joseph Konde-Lule of Makerere University's Institute of Public Health in the capital, Kampala, told a local newspaper, The Monitor, that HIV-positive mothers continued to breastfeed due to the high cost of substitutes.
However, research shows that where breastfeeding is traditional, women using substitutes are suspected of being HIV-positive, and potentially at risk of physical abuse, ostracism, and abandonment.
It is estimated that some 20,000 babies are infected annually in Uganda as a result of being breastfed by their HIV-positive mothers.
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