PMTCT Programme Is Yet to Achieve Desired Impact

According to this news article, research on barriers to prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission (PMTCT) and other maternal health services was conducted by HEPS Uganda, a health consumers' organisation advocating health rights and responsibilities, in western Kamwenge District, Uganda. It showed that the PMTCT programme is facing a serious challenge as a significant number of women are rejecting their HIV-positive test results, reportedly for a variety of reasons. Once pregnant women reject the results, it means they cannot access preventive treatment to protect their children against catching HIV during the pregnancy, labour, or breastfeeding. As stated in this article, the findings followed HEPS' Community Empowerment and Participation in Maternal Health in Kamwenge District project (2007), which resulted in more pregnant women seeking antenatal care services, although a large proportion reportedly refused to consent to voluntary HIV counselling and testing (VCT) services.

Funded by the Regional Network on Equity in Health in East and Southern Africa (Equinet), HEPS Uganda's project study aimed at facilitating the community to identify and try to solve barriers to PMTCT and other maternal health services. The refusal rate seems to be uniform at all test centres and signals that these individuals cannot access prevention treatment to protect their children against HIV infection. According to this article, current statistics indicate that close to 30,000 children are born with HIV annually in Uganda. At 21%, mother-to-child transmission is the second largest mode of HIV transmission after sexual contact. Anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs are advised for HIV-positive pregnant women, particularly after the first trimester and are given to their newborns for several days to several weeks after their birth.

HEPS reports that it would like to see improvement in the quality of counselling following the testing. Other barriers, according to HEPS, include expectant mothers not delivering in health facilities, bad attitudes of health workers towards pregnant women, and husbands who may not be giving adequate support to their wives during pregnancy.