Maternal Educational Level Determine Mother-to-child Transmission of HIV Among HIV-exposed Infants in Governmental Health Facility of Bahir Dar City, Northwest Ethiopia.

Abstract

Background: Globally at the end of 2011, 3.2 million children under the age of 15 were living with HIV, among these children 91% found in Africa. In Ethiopia, one of every three children born to these women is infected with HIV. This study was done to determine mother-to-child transmission of HIV infection and its factors among HIV-exposed infants on PMTCT service. Method: An institutional-based cross-sectional study was conducted among randomly selected 423 HIV exposed infants on PMTCT service in Bahir Dar city public health facility. Data were collected through chart review by using a pre-tested and structured checklist. Data was entered into Epi-data version 3.1 and exported to SPSS version 20 for analysis. The dependent variable association with explanatory variables was determined using logistic regression. Statistical significance was considered at p-value <0.05 with 95% CI. Result: The proportion of mother-to-child transmission of HIV infection among HIV-exposed infants on PMTCT services was 9.9%. Maternal educational status (AOR=3.196; 95% CI: 1.161-8.797), ANC follow-up (AOR=5.414; 95% CI: 1.860-15.761), age of infant at HIV infection confirmed (AOR=0.088; 95% CI: 0.033-0.238), and maternal CD4 count (AOR=3.162; 95% CI: 1.295-7.720) were factors significantly associated with mother-to-child transmission of HIV.Conclusion: The overall proportion of mother-to-child transmission of HIV infection among HIV exposed infants on PMTCT service were significantly high. This was due to low maternal educational status, absence of ANC follow-up, age of the infant at HIV infection confirmed, and low maternal CD4 count. Therefore, promoting women’s education, antenatal care, age of the infant at HIV test, and maintaining maternal CD4 count should be a great concern for health policymakers and health service providers.