The Prevention of Parent to Child Transmission of HIV/AIDS (PPTCT) programme was started in the country in the year 2002 following a feasibility study in 11 major hospitals in the five high HIV prevalence states. Currently, there are more than 4000 Integrated Counselling and Testing Centres (ICTCs) in the country, most of these in government hospitals, which offer PPTCT services to pregnant women. Of these ICTCs, 502 are located in Obstetrics and Gynaecology Departments and in Maternity Homes where the client load is predominantly comprised of pregnant women.

The Joint Technical Mission on PPTCT (2006) estimated that out of 27 million annual pregnancies in India, 189,000 occur in HIV positive pregnant women. In the absence of any intervention, an estimated cohort of 56,700 infected babies will be born annually. The PPTCT programme aims to prevent the perinatal transmission of HIV from an HIV infected pregnant mother to her newborn baby. The programme entails counselling and testing of pregnant women in the ICTCs. Pregnant women who are found to be HIV positive are given a single dose of Nevirapine at the time of labour; their newborn babies also get a single dose of Nevirapine immediately after birth so as to prevent transmission of HIV from mother to child.

The PPTCT services cover about 10 per cent pregnancies in the country. In the year 2006, 2.1 million pregnant women accessed this service. Of these, more than 16,500 pregnant women were HIV positive. In order to provide universal access to these services further scale up is planned up to the level of Community Health Centre and the Primary Health Centre, as well as private sector by forging public-private partnerships. Through these measures NACO hopes to achieve the UNGASS target of reducing the proportion of infants infected with HIV/AIDS by 50 percent by 2010.