Question:medium
Mother to baby transmission of HIV can be minimised by all of the following except?
Mother to baby transmission of HIV can be minimised by all of the following except?
Show Hint
Elective caesarean, not vaginal birth, cuts intrapartum HIV transmission.
Updated On: Jun 24, 2026
- Zidovudine
- HAART
- Vaginal delivery
- Avoidance of breast feeding
Show Solution
The Correct Option is C
Solution and Explanation
Frame this around the three windows in which the virus can reach the baby: before birth, during birth, and after birth through feeding. Anything that closes one of these windows lowers the chance of transmission. Antiretroviral drugs, whether single-agent zidovudine prophylaxis or full combination HAART, work by driving the mother's viral load down; with fewer virus particles in her blood and secretions, every transmission window becomes much safer, so these two measures help. Stopping breastfeeding and using replacement feeding shuts the post-delivery window entirely by removing the breast milk route, so that helps too. The odd one out concerns the birth itself. During a vaginal birth the infant passes through and is bathed in maternal blood and genital fluids, which actually creates an opportunity for infection rather than preventing one. The protective intrapartum option would be a planned caesarean section, not a vaginal delivery. So the choice that fails to reduce transmission is vaginal delivery. \[\boxed{\text{Vaginal delivery}}\]
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