Publication:

Awareness, attitude and practice on prevention of mother to child transmission of human-immunodeficiency virus among pregnant women in Taungoo Township, Myanmar

Background Globally, about 1.3 million human-immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-positive women get pregnant once a year, and about 160,000 children are born with the HIV. This study was conducted to investigate pregnant women's awareness, attitude, and practice regarding the prevention of mother to child HIV transmission (PMTCT).

Methods This cross-sectional study collected qualitative data from 152 pregnant women registered in the health facilities in Taungoo township. Simple random sampling was applied to cull three out of total rural health centres and systematic random sampling was exercised to recruit the required pregnant women from all registered pregnancies. The semi-structured questionnaire and statistical package for the social sciences (SPSS) version 23 were used for data collection and analysis accordingly.

Results In overall, the pregnant women studied had good awareness (56.6%), favourable attitude (60.5%), and good practice (55.3%) on PMTCT services. 78.3% were aware of the PMTCT project and knew that a baby can be prevented from HIV transmission by an HIV mother, 57.8% agreed that counselling and testing for HIV during pregnancy are important and 85.5% were tested for HIV. The awareness was associated with the family type (p=0.049), the attitude was associated with age (p=0.048), residence (p=0.024), and frequency of antenatal visits during current pregnancy (p=0.021), and practice was associated with antenatal care delivery sites (p=0.038), husband's support for antenatal care (p=0.004) and taking antenatal services during a previous pregnancy (p=0.033).

Conclusions Many unsatisfactory findings regarding PMTCT services were noted. So, strategic interventions and effective approaches for getting the full coverage of PMTCT programs should be strengthened.