16.8  Additional care for the HIV-positive woman during pregnancy

Finally, we should mention that a recent study in Ethiopia showed that most of the study participants believed that if HIV-infected women got pregnant, their general health would deteriorate because pregnancy accelerates HIV disease progression. As mentioned above, being pregnant does not mean that the healthy condition of the woman will deteriorate. However, maternal health may deteriorate during pregnancy because of the stage of HIV. If a woman gets pregnant when she has advanced HIV, she will certainly experience many health problems, including opportunistic infections. Therefore it is not being HIV-positive itself that should guide health service providers to give her additional care — it is the stage of the disease.