1This book is the result of a collaboration between the French Institute of Pondicherry and YRG Centre for AIDS Research and Education, Chennai. With this publication, the two editors hope to bridge perspectives of the medical and social sciences, Indian and French skills, the public and private health sectors or NGOs, as well as to offer an original contribution to the understanding of and encounter with the HIV/AIDS epidemic in India.

2In the context of the spread of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in India, Mother To Child Transmission (MTCT) is seen to be increasingly crucial. Because this subject has only recently begun to emerge in India, available publications are rare. We hope that this book will constitute a reference for those making decisions in the domain of public health, for medical, epidemiological and social scientists, as well as for medical institutions, NGOs and all people involved in the understanding and the prevention of the epidemic in India. The different contributions presented here are intended to broaden ongoing debates and analyses of Indian society in its confrontation with the HIV/AIDS epidemic, especially as regards the infection of women and children. And, we will be very happy if we are able to contribute to and facilitate the initiation of research in the social sciences on this subject.

3Funds provided by different instances have made this publication possible. We wish to thank the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs for financing the organization of the round-table seminar held in Pondicherry in April 2002, the Indo-French programme for cooperation in the social sciences (EHESS, Paris) for having provided travel costs of the French scientists. For the editing work, we thank the Agence Nationale de la Recherche sur le Sida (National Agency for AIDS Research), Paris, for having financed the translation and reviewing of all the English texts.

4The realization of this book has gone through different stages and we would like to thank all those involved. First of all, we thank very much the team of the Department of Social Sciences of the French Institute for having helped to organize the seminar in April 2002 in Pondicherry: Florence Pittolo-Rageade, who participated in the scientific preparation and also chaired a session; R. Parthesarathy and G. Venkatasubramanian, who helped in the scientific preparation; K. Ramanujam, who organized the recording; and Tiaré, who organized matters at the grass-root level. We are also very grateful to the team of YRG CARE for having assisted this publication: Sylvia Hepsibah Rani for having transcribed the oral presentations and discussions, and Rochelle D’Souza Yepthomi for having efficiently followed all the steps of this publication. We thank also James Walker for having translated some texts from French to English and for having reviewed all the texts in English.

5We especially would also like to thank Frédéric Bourdier, who attended this seminar and helped in its scientific organization and also participated in reviewing some texts and discussions, and Alice Desclaux, whose attendance was unfortunately not possible because of time constraints, but who contributed a text and took the time to review other papers.

6We would like to thank all members of the Scientific Advisory Committee, who provided very fruitful comments for the publication. And, needless to say, we are very grateful to all the authors and participants who enthusiastically participated in the seminar in April 2002 and who have offered texts for publication. Their contribution, as well as that of other authors who did not attend the seminar but contributed to this publication, helped greatly to shape this reflection on the prevention of mother-to-child transmission in India. Without them this publication would not have been possible.