Midwives won't cope with Aids testing, says college

Midwives do not have the skills or the resources to conduct HIV tests, the College of Midwives said today.

It also complained they were not consulted about a new Health Ministry directive to routinely offer antenatal Aids screening

HIV testing was not a matter of a simple blood test and involved pre-testing, post-testing and counselling, college chief executive Karen Guilliland said.

"It's not just like adding a tick box," she said. "But somehow if you're pregnant it's an opportune time to have the test, (done by) a midwife who does not have specialist skills in HIV."

Every year midwives were asked to carry out additional functions "because they're there".

"To this one, we're putting a line and saying when does this stop and 'who consults us?'," she said.

With 58,000 New Zealand women giving birth every year, between 60 and 90 would return a "false negative".

"The test isn't perfect. Just because you have a test that says you have HIV doesn't mean you've got it. That means someone who does the test has to deal with the results."

Ms Guilliland said the college had not been approached by the ministry about the testing other than to be informed yesterday it was announcing a national screening programme.

"The practicalities need to be supported and the workforce that is going to have to do the testing needs to be provided with the resources to do that."

The ministry's announcement followed a report by the Health and Disabilities Commission which criticised the medical care a pregnant HIV-positive woman received in 1999 which led to the infection of her baby.

The woman was unaware she was HIV-positive and, despite unexplained anaemia and cervical smear abnormalities during her pregnancy, was not tested until her baby was 18 months old.

However, Ms Guilliland said the college agreed the current system needed improving.

Health Ministry spokesman Dr Pat Tuohy said today the majority of pregnant women offered the test were expected to take it up.

"Overseas when this sort of offer has been put in place over 90 per cent of women accept the test as a useful thing and go ahead with it," he told National Radio.

He said that "99.9 per cent of those woman are found to be negative -- just as most of them are tested negative for syphilis and hepatitis".

Routine antenatal HIV screening in other developed countries, including Australia and the United Kingdom, is believed to cut mother-to-baby transmissions to less than one per cent.

In New Zealand between five and 10 mothers a year were likely to be HIV-positive.

- NZPA