The United AIDS program announced on Tuesday that seven countries in sub-Saharan Africa have cut the number of new HIV infections in children by 50 percent since 2009, according to Reuters.
The organization's announcement means that thousands of babies were born free of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV.) UNAIDS has a Global Plan to confront the disease in around 20 of the most-affected countries.
The countries affected by the recent UNAIDS announcement are Botswana, Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Namibia, South Africa and Zambia. Across 21 priority countries in Africa, there were 130,000 fewer new HIV infections among children in 2012.
The drop in infections can be attributed to the increased drug treatment of pregnant women with the virus. Coverage rates for pregnant women were above 75 percent in many of the priority countries, according to Reuters.
Antiretroviral therapy improves the health of mothers with the HIV that causes AIDS, but also can prevent the virus from being transmitted to their children.
"The progress in the majority of countries is a strong signal that with focused efforts every child can be born free from HIV," Michel Sidibé, UNAIDS' executive director told Reuters. "But progress has stalled in some countries with high numbers of new HIV infections. We need to find out why and remove the bottlenecks which are preventing scale-up."
UNAIDS said Angola and Nigeria are their biggest concern where new infections in children have increased and remained unchanged since 2009. Nigeria has seen nearly 60,000 new infections in 2012, according to Reuters. Children who are infected have low access to AIDS drugs that can help keep control the disease.
UNAIDS reported 3 in 10 children getting the medications they need in most "priority countries." The organization pledges it will continue its fight keep HIV infections from spreading in priority countries.
