Introduction: The Prevention of Parent to Child Transmission (PPTCT) of HIV/AIDS program was started in the country in the year 2002 with the aim to offer HIV testing to all pregnant women. During the initial years, single–dose Nevirapine was the drug of choice to prevent mother to child transmission and was offered to the HIV–infected pregnant woman during labour and to her new born infant. This has now been replaced with the World Health Organization‘s(WHO) 2015 Consolidated guidelines that all pregnant and breastfeeding women with HIV initiate anti–retroviral therapy(ART) and continue ART as lifelong treatment. This study compares two PPTCT interventions – single–dose nevirapine (sd–nvp) to multi–drug ART regimen in a PPTCT centre in coastal Andhra Pradesh, where there is a high prevalence of HIV.

METHODS: This is a retrospective and prospective cohort study carried out during different periods, i.e., between February 2004 to August 2008 (single dose nevirapine group) and April 2015 to March 2018(multi–drug regimen group).

RESULTS: The present study showed a statistically significant reduction (Fisher exact test  0.046, p<0.05) in incidence of HIV in babies born to mothers who used multi–drug ART. No significant reduction has been noted in incidence with respect to the mode of delivery or the type of feed given to the baby

CONCLUSION: Triple–drug ART regimen is more effective as compared to the earlier regimen of single–dose nevirapine prophylaxis for the PPTCT programme. ART reduces the risk of transmission in such a way that the contribution of other factors remains significantly low.