ABSTRACT
In developing countries, the history of prevention of HIV transmission through breastfeeding was complex. A number of factors hindered the scaling up of the abandonment of breastfeeding as a preventive strategy regarding HIV risk. The moralizing context that was related to HIV contamination during the first decade, owing to perceptions of the infection as due to extramarital sexual relationships and sex workers, and the load of misfortune attached to a deadly disease, have not faded away. Unlike women in developed countries, the women we interviewed in Bobo-Dioulasso did not “apply a medical recommendation” regarding infant feeding, since they had to select between proscription and control of breastfeeding options. The women living with HIV in Burkina Faso, the majority of whom discovered their HIV status during their last pregnancy, could, in health services supported by international projects and community-based organizations, choose between proscription and control of breastfeeding.
