Government hopes to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV by 2025

03 December 2019
Government hopes to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV by 2025
A child living with HIV attached to an oxygen tank looks through a window of the HIV/AIDS Care Center, a hospice run by Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) Party, in Yangon, Myanmar, 01 December 2019. Photo: Lynn Bo Bo/EPA

Myanmar's health authorities are planning to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV by 2025, according to a release from the Health and Sports Ministry, Xinhua reported.

Myint Htwe, union minister of health and sports, said that the HIV infection rate to pregnant women declined from 0.84 percent in 2011 to 0.57 percent in 2018, at the celebration of the World AIDS Day 2019 held on Sunday.

According to statistical data of the AIDS Epidemic Model-AEM, there were about 237,000 people living with HIV nationwide and its prevalence rate is at 0.57 percent in the country last year.

Numbers of HIV incidence dropped to over 10,000 in 2018, from 29,000 in 2000, said the ministry's release.