Effect of health education on willingness to undergo HIV screening among antenatal attendees in a teaching hospital in north central Nigeria.

BACKGROUND

Testing for HIV during pregnancy provides a useful opportunity to institute treatment for HIV as required as well as protect the unborn baby. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of health education on the willingness of antenatal attendees to be screened for HIV.

METHODS

This was a quasiexperimental study involving the sequential enrolment of 122 pregnant women attending antenatal care who were at a gestational age of between 13 and 28 weeks for the study group and subsequent enrolment of the same one month after for the control. Two-stage analysis was done with the use of descriptive statistics and bivariate analysis. Level of significance was set at 5%.

RESULTS

Mean age of the study respondents was 27.6 ± 4.6 years while that of the control was 27.5 ± 4.8 years. Majority of the respondents were married in both study, 88 (72.7%), and control groups 84 (72.4%), 76.1% of the study group and 79.3% of the control group had at least secondary education, and 39.7% of the study group and 37.9% of the control group were primigravidae. Before intervention, 88.4% of the study group and 88.8% of the control group were willing to undergo voluntary HIV screening. There was an increase in this number after intervention (P < 0.05). Age, education, occupation, marital status, and parity were not significantly associated with a willingness to be screened for HIV before and after intervention among the study or control groups.

CONCLUSION

Health education as a strategy to enhance voluntary counseling and testing uptake in antenatal settings is advocated.