Perspectives of Women on Strategies to Improve the Number of Male Partners Testing for HIV at the Antenatal Clinic in Western Kenya, 2015.

Abstract

- Mother to child transmission of HIV (MTCT) remains a significant public health problem in Western Kenya. Male partner testing at the antenatal clinic (ANC) has been cited as a key strategy to reduce MTCT. The Western Kenya region has a high MTCT rate of 15% but low rate of testing for men at the ANC. We sought to describe the strategies for improving this low level of male partner testing. We conducted a facility-based cross sectional study in four health centres between February and April 2015. We interviewed women who were aged ≥18 years and had a living child aged ≤12 months, who were attending immunization clinic at the four health centers. A pre-tested standardized questionnaire was used to retrospectively collect information on strategies to improve male partner HIV testing at the ANC. Data was analyzed using Epi Info7. We performed descriptive statistics and further calculated prevalence odds ratios (PORs) and their 95% confidence intervals (CI) and factors with p-values ≤ 0.05 were considered statistically significant.We interviewed 216 participants, whose mean age was 26.1 years (±5.5 years). There were 119 (55%) who had attained post primary education, 32 (15%) were employed, 189 (87.5%) were married and 204 (94.4%) had attended public health facilities for ANC services. There were 31 (14%) women whose male partners had accompanied them to the ANC and undertook a HIV test. Formal invitation of the men to attend ANC (POR 3.1, CI=1.1- 8.3) was associated with male partner HIV testing. Few men tested for HIV at the ANC. Formal invitation of the men to attend ANC should be implemented as a strategy to improve male partner HIV testing at the ANC.