Assessing the Knowledge and Attitude of Pregnant Mothers on Compulsory Routine Counseling and Testing at Kisugu Health Center Makindye Division - Uganda.

Abstract

The study was based on the topic “Assessing the Knowledge and Attitude of pregnant mothers on Compulsory Routine Counseling and Testing at Kisugu Health Centre Makindye Division”. It aimed at assessing the pregnant women’s knowledge on RCT in Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV (PMTCT) service, to examine pregnant women’s attitude towards antiretroviral drugs in Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV and to identify the factors that affect the uptake and acceptability of RCT in PMTCT services. The study employed both quantitative and qualitative research designs where both questionnaires and interview guides were used to collect data from the field. All data was grouped and analyzed in a statistical way where by data was presented in tables showing frequencies and percentages. The following results were obtaining basing on the study finding; It was found out that there high levels of awareness of pregnant mothers regarding RCT services, also pregnant women seem to have a detailed information on the HIV/AIDS pandemic and RCT issues; among the factors that influence attitudes and perceptions towards RCT of HIV, stigma and discrimination jointly have greater impact, fear of prejudice can cause some women to refuse HIV RCT and testing; it is very difficult for an HIV infected mothers to adhere to infant feeding guidelines without disclosing her HIV status to her partner, the most effective interventions to reduce PMTCT depends upon knowing status and that depends upon the availability of information, counseling and RCT services. Among the cited recommendations were; there is need to increase on human resource to handle RCT program in hospitals, there is need to create partnership between Ministry of health and other NGOs, the Ministry should scale up RCT services to Health Center IVs so that pregnant women do not have to move long distances and the government should implement on RCT so that partner and other family members can access the HIV prevention, care and support services.