Narrator: This is Science Today. Worldwide, it's estimated that every year up to 700 thousand infants are infected with the HIV virus. The majority of those babies are living in developing countries of sub-Saharan Africa and about 40 percent of the infections come from breast feeding. To address this, researchers at University of California campuses at Berkeley and Davis have developed a low-tech, simple way for these moms to pasteurize their breast milk before feeding their babies.

Israel-Ballard: The method we devised is a form of flash pasteurization, where the idea is to heat the milk hot and heat it very fast. That is known to kill a lot of the pathogens, but keep the milk healthy as well.

Narrator: Kiersten Israel-Ballard of the University of California , Berkeley led the study.

Israel-Ballard: Our study to date has focused on looking at the safety, but certainly we want to start looking at feasibility. Can mothers do this in the field? They tell us they can, they tell us they would, but now we need to actually see if they can.

Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.