Though Greece had not detected a single case mother-to-child AIDS transmission, according to the Hellenic Center for Diseases Control and Prevention, a mother and daughter both recently tested positive for HIV, Reuters reports.
When the Ukrainian, who immigrated to Greece 12 years ago and married a Greek man, took her two-year-old daughter to a state-run hospital last October for wheezing and a persistent fever, one of the doctors suggested an HIV test. The diagnosis for both mother and daughter was positive. According to Reuters, the mother’s infection was missed by a nationwide screening program for pregnant women.
"I was devastated," she told Reuters.
According to Reuters, some in the Greek capital say the country's social safety net is fraying, particularly within the health system. Healthcare spending has fallen 36 percent this year, according to the National School of Public Health. When taking into account both the government and private individuals, the country spent around 25 billion euros, or roughly 10 percent of GDP, on both public and private health in 2010. In 2011 that will be 16 billion. Just 10 billion or so is government spending on the public health sector.
Although the latest available figures from the United Nations show that 0.1 percent of the Greek population had HIV/AIDS in 2009, in the first five months of 2010, Greece had 255 new HIV cases. Over the same period this year, there were 384 new cases — an increase of more than 50 percent. And according to the Hellenic Center, the rate of increase will rise to 60 percent by the end of 2011, Reuters reports.
