Late-stage HIV/AIDS among children: the missing diagnosis of a preventable disease.

We studied 126 malnourished children who had been admitted to the Instituto Materno Infantil Professor Fernando Figueira (IMIP) hospital. Nine (7.1%) had confirmation of HIV infection and all fulfilled the AIDS-defining criteria - all had been infected through mother-to-child transmission. Only one HIV-infected mother had been screened for HIV infection during prenatal care. There is, therefore, a need to increase HIV testing in all malnourished patients, especially when routine screening for HIV infection during prenatal care is not automatically undertaken.