Determinants of mother to child transmission of HIV in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Abstract

BackgroundAccording to the 2019 UNAIDS reports, globally 38 million people were living with HIV (36.2 million adult and 1.8 million Children). About 25.4 million were accessing antiretroviral therapy. Only 81% knew their HIV status. About 85% pregnant women living with HIV had access to antiretroviral medicines. ObjectiveThe purpose of this study was to assess the determinants of mother to child transmission of HIV in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. MethodThe study was conducted in three hospitals of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Mothers and HIV exposed infants were taken as study population. A total of 216 HIV exposed infants and mothers were selected by systematic random sampling method. Data was collected from February 2018 to April 2018. A hospital based cross-sectional study design was used for this study. Multivariate analysis was used to determine the association between dependant and independent variables. ResultsAccording to multivariate analysis, mothers who did not disclose their HIV status for their sexual partner (AOR: 1.4, CI: 1.33–3.865, p: 0.000), HIV discordant couple (AOR: 4.021, CI: 2.380, 55.622, p: 000), maternal CD4 count/mm3 less than 350 (AOR: 8.435, CI: 2.130, 48.299, p: 000) and unknown HIV status before pregnancy (AOR = 4.562, CI: 3.168, 42.303, p = 0.000) were significantly associated with increased risk of mother to child HIV transmission. ConclusionThis study shows that mothers who didn’t disclose their HIV status, HIV discordant couple, Maternal CD4 count less than 350/mm3 and unknown HIV status before pregnancy were associated with increased risk of mother to child HIV transmission.