New Delhi, June 6: Thailand is set to be named as the first Asian country and second in the world to have eliminated mother-to-child transmission of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and syphilis, thus ensuring babies are born free of these sexually-transmitted infections.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) is expected to validate on Tuesday data by Thai health authorities that over 98 per cent of pregnant women infected with HIV in Thailand receive anti-HIV therapy and that the rate of mother-to-child transmission of HIV has been pushed down to less than two per cent.

'Thailand is the first country with a large HIV epidemic to ensure that its generations are born HIV-free - this is a remarkable achievement in a country where an estimated 450,000 people were living with HIV in 2014,' Poonam Khetrapal Singh, the WHO regional director for Southeast Asia, said.

Health officials are praising Thailand's success as the result of a sustained campaign.

It began with observations in the late-1990s that introducing a short-course therapy with a drug called zidovudine can reduce the risk of mother-to-child transmission by half.

Thailand at the time had nearly 3,000 infants who were contracting HIV every year from mothers infected with the virus. The number dropped to about 1,000 by the turn of the millenium and last year only 85 children were infected with HIV.

The WHO had last year validated Cuba as the world's first country to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV. But, health officials point out that the challenge for Thailand was bigger because of the country's much larger population of HIV-infected persons.

Senior WHO officials say sustained efforts to prevent new HIV infections have helped reduce the burden of HIV among women of childbearing age in Thailand. Between 2000 and 2014, the annual number of newly-infected women fell from 15,000 to 1,900, an 87 per cent drop.

Public health officials say Thailand's universal health coverage that ensures essential health services to the poor and the rich also contributed to the success.

In 2002, the Thai government integrated short-course anti-viral therapy with the universal health cove-rage scheme, scaling up the number of women covered.

By 2009, over 90 per cent of women were counselled and tested for HIV, and almost 95 per cent of HIV positive pregnant women received the anti-viral therapy while over 95 per cent of infants born to HIV infected women received anti-viral therapy. Health officials knew they were close to achieving the 98 per cent mark.

But health officials caution that Thailand will continue to face the challenge posed by HIV.

One of the reasons being the high proportion of men who have sex with HIV-infected partners. One in every four persons is HIV positive in Thailand.

India introduced an initiative to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV in 2001-02. Health statistics suggest that India has a very low prevalence of HIV among antenatal women.