Abstract:
Most pediatric HIV infections are acquired through mother-to-child transmission of HIV. Without intervention, about 40% of the children born of infected mothers will gel infected by the virus. Among the intervention strategies to reduce this transmission is voluntary counselling and testing for HIV during the antenatal period in order to detect the status and therefore enable either treatment or prophylaxis. Antenatal clinic sentinel surveillance continues to be used to drive national estimates because of the cosfi involved in nationally representative surveys which are held after long periods of time. Taking into account the dynamism of the epidemic, area specific studies are helpful in the approach to care in those areas and this is the principle that guided this study. The study sought to establish the knowledge of women seeking antenatal care at the Provincial General Hospital, Nakuru, Kenya, on HIV in relationship to various socio- demographic characteristics and to establish the serostatus of the clients. It also sought to establish the behaviour and practice of those who tested positive for HIV in the study. Socio-demographic data was collected among the 983 clients who agreed to be counselled and tested. Counselling was done before and after testing. A pretested questionnaire was used to collect the data. Within this group, 9I'2clients (98. 7‘/1) had heard about HIV/AIDS and 975 (99.2%) knew how the infection could be transmitted from mother to child. There was a gradual increase in knowledge with advancing age on how the risk of transmission could be reduced. Out of the 983 clients who were tested, 79 (8.0%) turned positive. The highest number of the positive clients was in the age bracket 30-34 years. The level of infection related inversely to the level of education. The casual workers had the highest infection rate. Perceived hostility from the husband militated against carrying prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV prophylactic antiritroviral drugs by the HIV- positive clients.
