Please help me out, as I am a bit anxious about what happened to my baby last weekend. 

We were at a gathering, and a woman took my baby on her lap to feed him. She was giving him mashed food directly with her fingers, and I noticed that my baby was repeatedly putting a her finger into his mouth with each bite.

After this had happened several times (10 times or so), I suddenly realized that the same finger she was using to feed him had a small cut on it. Around the cut, there appeared to be a small area of what looked like smeared blood. It did not seem to be actively oozing blood, but I don´t know as I saw this some time after the feeding process started.

This made me very worried about the possibility of HIV transmission, because I have read there have been some cases of hiv transmission to babies from caretakers who prechew their food with blood in their mouth and passed the illness to the baby. I am not sure if what happened to my baby resembles this scenario but in any case I wanted to make sure my baby is not at risk. Please let me know, especially because my baby's mouth came into direct contact with that finger multiple times while he was eating. 

How old is your baby?

I say that there is virtually no risk from the event you describe for several reasons:

1.  First, it is most unlikely that the woman who was feeding your child has untreated HIV.

2.  Second, infection of babies as a result of ingestion of breast milk or food which has been pre-chewed by an infected woman is very rare and when it occurs occurs only in newborn children who are unable to digest anything other than breast milk. In those cases, the newborn digestive tract can be a rare source of infection but the situations in which it has occurred involved multiple (many) exposures and occurred before the child could digest anything other than breast milk or something roughly equivalent to it.

3.  The presence of a small cut on the woman's finger does not change this assessment.

I hope that this information is helpful to you.  Please don't worry.  There is no need for your child to be tested.  EWH