Knowledge, attitude and practice of hepatitis b and its transmission from mother to child among pregnant women attending antenatal clinics in Jos University Teaching Hospital

Abstract

Background: Hepatitis B virus(HBV) infection remains a serious public health problem worldwide. Mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) of HBV is the major mode of transmission in HBV-endemic areas, including Nigeria, where little is known about pregnant women's knowledge of and attitudes towards HBV infection and MTCT.
Methodology: A cross-sectional study conducted over a 3-month period among 361 consenting pregnant women attending antenatal clinic at the Jos University Teaching Hospital, Plateau State, Nigeria. A structured self-administered questionnaire was used to extract information from the respondents. Data was analyzed with IBM SPSS statistics version 23.0
Result: Socio-demographic characteristics of participants revealed that most of the participants(47.1%) were aged between 27-38 years. The Majority were married (93.6%), Christains (62.6%), resided in Urban areas (68.1%), had tertiary education (57.3%) and were unemployed (41.6%). Overall 51.0% of the participants had adequate knowledge about the Hepatitis B virus while most of the pregnant women (59.3%) had negative attitude toward Hepatitis B. Practice of safety measures for Hepatitis showed that about half (51.2%) of the participants had done screening for Hepatitis. The level of vaccination against Hepatitis B was however low (36.0%) among the study participants.
Conclusion: The results highlighted the need to prioritize educating pregnant women and mothers in future public health campaigns to increase knowledge, reduce misperception and improve hepatitis B vaccination. The overall knowledge of participants was found to be inadequate, and their attitude and practice were also limited. In this study, poor knowledge about the transmission of HBV from mother to child was evident.