Statistical Analysis of Factors that Affects Women's Knowledge on Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV during Pregnancy in Ethiopia

Abstract

Human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is one of the most encompassing and highly recognized infectious pandemics in our modern world today. Mother-to-child transmission of HIV is the major source of HIV infection among children under the age of fifteen years. The data were obtained from the 2016 Ethiopian Demographic and Health Survey with women in the age group 15-49 years. Binary logistic regression and descriptive statistical measures are applied. The results of the analysis showed that among the place of residence, urban women are more knowledgeable than rural women (72.3 and 67.1 percent, respectively) to report awareness about mother-to-child transmission of HIV during pregnancy. The Rural women are the least likely to know the facts about mother to child transmission of HIV compared with Urban women. The percent of knowing mother to child transmission of HIV increase as education level increase. According to the result of logistic regression,  age,  education level, religion, region, place of residence, frequency of reading newspaper, frequency of listening radio and HIV testing play significance role in determining women's knowledge on mother to child transmission of HIV. This study suggests that investment in women’s education should be a practical priority and the impact of education on knowledge about mother to child transmission of HIV increase with education level. Therefore, the government of Ethiopian should also consider and improve females' participant in school to reduce the prevalence of mother to child transmission of HIV. Based on the results of this study, the researcher found to be promising to address practical problems of mother to child transmission of HIV virus in Ethiopia. It can be learn from a study that in addition to the efforts being made to reduce the frequency of mother to child transmission of HIV in general and produce healthy children in the country.

DOI: 10.7176/JNSR/14-3-04

Publication date: February 28^th 2023