Sherr L, Hensels I S, Tomlinson M, Skeen S, Macedo A
Department of Global Health, University College London, London, UK.
Department of Psychology, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK.
Child Care Health Dev. 2018 Jan;44(1):89-98. doi: 10.1111/cch.12533. Epub 2017 Oct 19.
Child development is negatively impacted by HIV with children that are infected and affected by HIV performing worse than their peers in cognitive assessments.
We conducted a descriptive follow-up comparison study (n=989) in South Africa and Malawi. We tracked child development in 135 HIV-positive children compared to 854 uninfected children aged 4-13 years attending community-based organizations at baseline and again 12-15 months later.
Children with HIV were more often stunted (58.8% vs. 27.4%) and underweight (18.7% vs. 7.1%). They also had significantly poorer general physical functioning (M=93.37 vs. M=97.00). HIV-positive children scored significantly lower on digit span and the draw-a-person task.
These data clearly show that HIV infection poses a serious risk for child development and that there is a need for scaled up interventions. Community-based services may be ideally placed to accommodate such provision and deliver urgently needed support to these children.
儿童发育受到艾滋病毒的负面影响，感染和受艾滋病毒影响的儿童在认知评估中的表现比同龄人差。
我们在南非和马拉维进行了一项描述性随访比较研究（n = 989）。我们追踪了135名艾滋病毒呈阳性儿童的发育情况，并与854名4至13岁未感染儿童进行比较，这些儿童在基线时参加社区组织活动，12至15个月后再次进行跟踪。
感染艾滋病毒的儿童发育迟缓（58.8%对27.4%）和体重不足（18.7%对7.1%）的情况更为常见。他们的总体身体机能也明显较差（M = 93.37对M = 97.00）。艾滋病毒呈阳性的儿童在数字广度和画人任务中的得分明显更低。
这些数据清楚地表明，艾滋病毒感染对儿童发育构成严重风险，需要扩大干预措施。基于社区的服务可能最适合提供此类服务，并为这些儿童提供急需的支持。
