Abstract
Nigeria contributes the highest to the global burden of HIV/AIDS and also accounts for the largest proportion of new vertically transmitted HIV infections among children. The Mentor Mothers program in the Nigerian Department of Defense was introduced in accordance with the World Health Organization and its implementing partner guidelines to curb the high incidence of vertically acquired HIV infections. Understanding the experiences of participants could serve as a gateway to evaluating the effectiveness of the program to better provide quality services within targeted health facilities. This qualitative study employed key informant interviews with six healthcare workers as well as two focus group discussions with six mentor mothers and six prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) patients in four selected hospitals in the Nigerian Department of Defense to explore their experiences of the Mentor Mothers program. A thematic analysis technique was used to analyze the collated data. As a result, four main themes emerged, with the program perceived by most participants as providing psychosocial support to the patients, a valuable educational resource for raising HIV awareness, a valuable resource for promoting exclusive breastfeeding and mitigating vertical transmission of the virus, and functioning as a link between patients and the healthcare system. The participants reported that the program had effectively decreased HIV infections in children, reduced child and maternal mortality, and supported the livelihood and development of women, families, and communities in and around the Nigerian Department of Defense health facilities.
Highlights
In 2017, the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) report revealed that out of the 180,000 new infections among children globally, about 159,000 occurred in sub-Saharan Africa, with Nigeria contributing the largest proportion of about 23% of new infections within the sub-Saharan region [1]
The prevalence of children born with HIV infection has declined by 58% since 2002 in Nigeria, about 240,000 infants were born with HIV in 2013 in the country [5,6], which is above the global standard of 20,000
An analysis of mother support groups and mentor mothers (MMs) programs in countries like South Africa, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Malawi, Zimbabwe, and Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have revealed that support groups and MMs play a key role in ensuring a smooth continuum of care for HIV-positive mothers and their children, with MMs programs and/or mother support group participants having better prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) outcomes and reporting psychosocial wellbeing more often compared to others [17,20,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36]
Summary
In 2017, the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) report revealed that out of the 180,000 new infections among children globally, about 159,000 occurred in sub-Saharan Africa, with Nigeria contributing the largest proportion of about 23% of new infections within the sub-Saharan region [1]. Two reports conducted by UNAIDS in 2012 revealed that only about 62% of HIV-infected pregnant women in Nigeria received ARVs for PMTCT [3,4], and only 35% of infants born to HIV-infected mothers in Nigeria were tested within the first two months of delivery [3]. The prevalence of children born with HIV infection has declined by 58% since 2002 in Nigeria, about 240,000 infants were born with HIV in 2013 in the country [5,6], which is above the global standard of 20,000. The first PMTCT of HIV program commenced in the country in
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