139,000 Mozambique babies born with HIV in six months

A total of 139,000 Mozambican babies have been born with the AIDS virus in the last six months, according to a report released on Monday by the
United Nations Children's Fund.

The same report said that 146,000 pregnant women had been diagonosed as being
HIV carriers but a programme of drug treatment had managed to prevent the virus from being transmitted to some of the babies
Like much of southern Africa, Mozambique is struggling to combat AIDS which affects nearly 1.5 million people, around 16.2 percent of the overall population.

Around 20,000 children under the age of five died of AIDS in the country last year, according to figures from the health ministry.