Women's acceptability of screening for HIV in pregnancy.

It is now possible to significantly reduce the risk of HIV transmission from mother to child, provided the woman’s HIV status is known. Most OECD countries now offer some form of routine antenatal screening. 1 The Ministry of Health (MOH) in New Zealand circulated provisional guidelines for routine HIV risk assessment in 1997. However, as presented in the companion article, in this issue of the Journal, recent evidence shows that antenatal women are not routinely assessed for HIV risk or offered HIV testing, at least not in the South Island, nor are they informed of the effective treatment to prevent mother-to-child transmission. As of 31 December 2000, twelve children in New Zealand were known to be infected with HIV by perinatal transmission. 2 International studies suggest that the probability an HIVpositive woman will transmit the virus to her baby during pregnancy, labour, delivery, or breastfeeding ranges from 15-25% in an industrialised country, with no intervention. 3,4