Knowledge and Practice of Prevention of Mother-to-child transmission of HIV Among Traditional Birth Attendants in Taraba State, North-east Nigeria

Abstract

Background: In resource-constrained countries such as Nigeria, Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs) still play a crucial role in providing maternity and childcare services including Prevention of Maternal to Child Transmission of HIV (PMTCT). It is therefore imperative to assess the knowledge and practice of  PMTCT of HIV  among TBAs in Taraba State.

Methods: This study adopted descriptive cross-sectional study. The cluster sampling method was used to select the facilities to be included in the study. In the first stage, the state was divided into three zones, one zone was selected using balloting with replacement. In the second stage, all the facilities in the selected zone with TBAs were used for the study. The purposive sampling method was used to select 143 TBAs. A researcher structured, questionnaire was used for data collection. Frequencies and per centages were used to analyze the research questions while chi-square statistic was used to analyze the hypotheses at o.o5 level of significance using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 28.

Results: All respondents in the study were females, and majority (86%) had good knowledge about HIV and PMTCT, while one-third (31.5%) believed that HIV can be cured. A good number of the respondents observed good infection prevention control measures, however, the majority of the TBAs (85.0%) lacked adequate water supply during deliveries. Good knowledge of HIV and PMTCT was significantly associated with HIV counselling of the clients (p=0.035)

Conclusion: Most of the participants had good knowledge and practice of HIV and PMTCT. Continuous training and retraining of TBAs, adequate water supply as well as increase renumeration will improve the quality of their services.