Paediatric HIV disclosure in South Africa - caregivers' perspectives on discussing HIV with infected children

Abstract

Most paediatric HIV infections in South Africa are transmitted perinatally. Lack of widely available HIV treatment means that most children do not survive to an age at which disclosure becomes a relevant concern. However, with the expansion of HIV treatment programmes the proportion of HIV-infected children surviving to an advanced age is likely to increase substantially during the next 5 - 10 years. A similar phenomenon was observed in Europe and North America with the advent of antiretroviral therapy (ART) in the mid-1990s, and in resource-rich settings approximately half of perinatally infected children are expected to survive beyond 13 years of age.1