Reproductive aspects and knowledge of family planning among women with Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome

Abstract

Objective:To analyze the reproductive aspects and knowledge of family planning among women with Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS). Method: Crosssectional and descriptive study carried out from January to December, 2015, in the outpatient care of infectious disease unit in a hospital located in Fortaleza, Ceará. Data were collected through a form applied by interview in a private setting. Results: 102 women participated in the study. Most were aware that they were serologically positive with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) during prenatal care (96.1%) and did not intend to have more children (63.7%). Women who were less than 39 years of age, had a higher educational level, and a shorter time of antiretroviral therapy had better chances of having children (p≤0.05). Having a steady partner increased the chance of desiring to have children, while tubal ligation was higher among women that did not receive counseling on family planning. Knowledge of family planning was limited because of lack of assistance provided by health professionals. DESCRIPTORS INTRODUCTIONThere are 36.7 million people around the world living with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV), and the number of infected women represents more than half of this population (1) . Access to antiretroviral therapy (ART) has been significantly expanded, providing improvement in the quality of life and an increase in survival rates for people with HIV and Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS), and raised challenges aimed at guaranteeing total health for these individuals (1)(2) . In this regard, a decrease in morbimortality and an increase in the number of women of reproductive age with HIV/AIDS have been seen, which led to broadening the discussion on family planning (2)(3) , with the aim of maintaining the health of women, safeguarding reproductive rights, avoiding unintended pregnancy and maternal death, and preventing virus spread and vertical transmission (4) . Brazil is renowned for having a national program for HIV/AIDS that guarantees antiretroviral drugs free of charge and sustainably for everyone with HIV/AIDS, including pregnant women, in addition to offering quick testing and serology for detecting HIV in pregnant women (5) . Despite these achievements, there are social inequalities among the regions of Brazil related to virus detection rate in this population. In the Northeast region, detection rates for HIV are the lowest, and pregnant women have the poorest education and hence are the most affected in the country (6) . As a consequence, there is a lack of information about the factors that affect the wish to have children among these women, as well as the use of contraceptive methods, in this Brazilian region.Evidence suggests that, despite the possibility of women with HIV/AIDS having a healthy and reasonable sexual and reproductive life, there are challenges related to access to sexual and reproductive rights and health services, including the provision of contraceptive methods (7) . Furthermore, barriers such as la...

Reproductive Plans And Utilization of Contraceptives Among Women Living With HIV

“…This study depicted similar findings in sociodemographic characteristics of the respondents when compared with similar previous studies 10,12,21. This implies that WLHIV have similar sociodemographic characteristics irrespective of the location of the study.…”

“…Having many children by WLHIV may be related to knowledge about pregnancy risks HIV-positive women are exposed to during pregnancy. Prior related studies have reported similar results in Ethiopia,24 Ghana,21 and Brazil 25. Hence, there may be need to include importance of having very few children in counselling WLHIV.…”

“…WLHIV who had no desire for pregnancy are more likely to use long acting contraceptives 31,21,29. This could be why there was a significant association between the respondents’ desire for children and knowledge of contraceptive options.…”

Men’s sexual and reproductive health in the situation of HIV-serodiscordance

“…However, a third of them revealed they had received reproductive planning guidance and were unaware of prophylaxis measures for vertical HIV transmission. Regarding the serology of couples and conception, women believed seroconcordant couples could have children and serodiscordant couples could not (9) .…”

“…This context leads to discussions about sexual and reproductive health and includes the problem arising from the diagnosis of HIV infection, which in turn, imposes the need for planning with use of biotechnologies, such as assisted human reproduction (AHR) (7) , how to protect sexual transmission (8) and prophylaxis of vertical transmission of the virus when the woman is HIV positive. There is also the need to know the couple's serostatus (9) -seroconcordant, when both live with HIV, or serodiscordant, when only one partner lives with the virus, among other facts.…”