WHO Guideline: Updates on HIV and Infant Feeding (2016)

The overall purpose of this guideline is to improve the HIV-free survival of HIV-exposed infants by providing guidance on appropriate infant feeding practices and use of ARV drugs for mothers living with HIV in countries with high HIV prevalence and settings in which diarrhoea, pneumonia and undernutrition are common causes of infant and child mortality.

The guideline addresses four aspects of infant feeding in the context of HIV:

  • the duration of breastfeeding by mothers living with HIV;
  • interventions to support infant feeding practices by mothers living with HIV;
  • what to advise when mothers living with HIV do not exclusively breastfeed; and
  • what to advise when mothers living with HIV do not plan to breastfeed for 12 months.

The guideline informs national policy-makers on what may be relevant for national policies and programmes, it provides guidance to health-care providers, researchers and clinicians involved in managing pregnant women and mothers living with HIV at various levels of health care.

Postnatal HIV transmission in breastfed infants of HIV-infected women on ART: a systematic review and meta-analysis (2017)

A systematic review of all literature to date (2017) on mother-to-child transmission in breastfed infants whose mothers received antiretroviral therapy and support the process of updating the World Health Organization infant feeding guidelines in the context of HIV and ART, which concludes that there is evidence of substantially reduced postnatal HIV transmission risk under the cover of maternal ART.