Persons Who Acquire HIV at Birth Need Better Support

People who acquire HIV from their birthing parent during pregnancy, childbirth, or during breast or chest feeding, as well as those who acquire the virus via blood transfusion before 5 years of age, are considered to be cases of perinatally-acquired HIV. Affected individuals themselves, however, are organizing under preferred terms of “Dandelions” or “Lifetime Survivors” which are the names of two networks they are forming to provide mutual support and advocacy. For brevity, we refer to Lifetime Survivors and Dandelions interchangeably for this whole group of people and we are not specifically referring to members of either the Dandelions Movement or the Lifetime Survivors Network. It is estimated that in 2019, there were 12,355 Lifetime Survivors out of roughly 1.2 million people with HIV in the U.S.

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