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Published: Thursday, 14 March 2013 14:11

Earlier this week, reports surfaced of doctors in the US who had successfully “cured” an infant of HIV. According to the Mail & Guardian, the child was born HIV positive and placed on ARV treatment consisting of three different anti-retroviral drugs at 30 hours.

Now, two and a half years later, the child is regarded as “functionally cured”, meaning that it no longer needs treatment for HIV, has a normal life expectancy and is unlikely to pass the disease on to others.

Scientists at the University of Mississippi, who treated the child, have claimed this case as the first incidence of a person being “functionally cured” of HIV. However, experts around the world remain cautious about the chances of the treatment working on other children who are HIV positive.

According to the experts, the case is exceptional due to the fact that the child was started on ARV treatment at only 30 hours old. Most infants are only tested for HIV at six weeks. Furthermore, paediatric HIV specialist Harry Moultrie warned against making generalizations in terms of a cure for HIV. “Even if this is shown to be a functional cure, I’m not convinced if you did this to every child it would have the same result,” he said.

Meanwhile, paediatric HIV specialist Ashraf Coovadia stressed the importance of prevention rather than relying on a cure. Early treatment, he said, could not guarantee that a child born to an HIV positive mother would not contract the disease. However, HIV positive mothers who take ARV medication while pregnant reduce the chances of passing on the disease to their child to less than 5%.