Fertility desires predictors among people living with HIV/AIDS at art care centers of two teaching hospitals in Addis Ababa.

BACKGROUND

Studies from different contexts worldwide in both developed and developing countries in the era of wide access to antiretroviral drugs indicate that many HIV positive individuals continue to exhibit high risk sexual behaviors, fertility intentions being one of the many characteristics.

OBJECTIVE

Identify the level and determinants of fertility desire among people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHAs) at antiretroviral treatment (ART) centers.

METHODS

A cross-sectional study was conducted on randomly sampled, 396 PLWHAs. Odds ratio along with 95% confidence intervals were used to measure the association of the study variables with the outcome variable.

RESULTS

The majority of respondents were females, 330 (83.3%), and 224 (56.6%) were in the age category of 25-35 years with the mean age of 33.5 +/- 6.61 years. From a total of 396 study subjects interviewed, 172 (43.3%) desired to have children in the future, out of which 123 (71.5%) stated positively that they intended to give birth in the near future, and of these 33 (26.8%) had taken action and are currently pregnant. CD4 count above 350/mm3, partner's desire to have a child, life time history of not having live births and number of alive children are the most important predictors of fertility desire reported in this survey.

CONCLUSION

Fertility desire remains to be high. This will pose serious challenges in areas of high HIV prevalence, like Ethiopia, on the implementation of the PMTCT programs. The strong predictors of fertility desire found in our study on the other hand can be used by policy makers, planners, and health service providers in the planning and implementation of the PMTCT programs. We suggest a large scale studies to be undertaken in the future.