HIV Knowledge and Acceptance of Provider Initiated HIV Testing and counseling Among Antenatal Care Attendees at General Hospitals in Lagos, Nigeria

Abstract

Background: Most HIV infected pregnant women may not be aware of their positive status.Most of the children living with HIV today got infected as a result of mother to child transmission. Provider Initiated HIV testing and counseling is one of the strategies to improve uptake of HCT aimed at achieving zero new HIV infection among children.
Objective: This study was carried out to assess the knowledge and acceptance of provider initiated HIV testing and counseling among pregnant women attending General Hospitals in Lagos State.
Methods:This cross sectional study was carried out in July 2013. Using a multi-stage sampling method, 326 pregnant women seeking ante-natal care (ANC) in General Hospitals in Lagos State were selected. Information was collected with interviewer-administered questionnaires and data analyzed with Epi-info version 3.5.1. Chi square test was used to test for associations at a significance level of 5%.
Results: Majority of the respondents were married (92.6%), Christians (81.0%),employed (71.2%), had tertiary education(77.9%), primips (53.4%) and the mean age was 29.89years.Knowledge of the various routes of MTCT was poor: during pregnancy 59.7%, vaginal delivery 37.1%, and breastfeeding 63.5%, Majority (70%) had good knowledge generally of HIV, MTCT and PMTCT. Majority(98.1%) accepted to be tested for HIV;among this group 85.5% accepted to be tested to enable themknow their status. Respondents who had tertiary education (p<0.001) and previous pregnancy (p=0.013) were more likely to have good knowledge of PITC. Good knowledge was associated with acceptance of PITC (p<0.001).
Conclusion: Acceptance of provider initiated HIV testing and counseling was high among our study population. There is however a need to provide comprehensive information to improve their knowledge of specific routes of MTCT.

Key words: PITC, MTCT, HIV, Nigeria