Simple drugs stopped this child from getting HIV from her mother. Yet 400 babies are born every day with the disease. What will it take to protect them all?
IN THE FALL OF 2010, MASONIA TRAYLOR’S life changed overnight. Then 23, she was living with her new boyfriend in Atlanta and working as a pharmacy technician at a nearby drugstore. She took good care of herself, always went for an annual checkup, and ever since she graduated from high school, she had made it a practice to get tested for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. Every year, her tests would come back negative. Until one didn’t.
“At first I felt like the test was a lie, that the labs got mixed up,” she says. “Then I started to feel guilt. I felt like I was being punished for not waiting to have sex until I was married.”
It was October when her doctor told her she had tested positive for HIV. For the next several weeks, she tried to digest the news, sometimes crying uncontrollably, sometimes numb. But she also had treatment options to sort out, so by early November, she was back at her doctor’s office. That’s when the doctor delivered another shock: Traylor was pregnant.
Her first reaction was similar to the one she’d had with her HIV diagnosis:
