Awareness of HIV/AIDS and household environment of pregnant women in Pune, India

Abstract

Our objective was to determine the level of HIV/AIDS knowledge of pregnant women in India. In a sub-sample of these women, we documented the extent to which they experienced adverse social and physical difficulties within their home. The study was performed at an urban antenatal hospital clinic in Maharastra, India. From April to September 2001, structured interviews were conducted on 707 randomly selected antenatal clinic patients related to HIV/AIDS knowledge. Of these, 283 were further interviewed to document any social or physical difficulties they experienced. Over 75% of women displayed knowledge of primary transmission routes. Nearly 70% of women demonstrated knowledge of maternal to child transmission, however, only 8% knew of any methods of prevention. TV and written material were more strongly related to knowledge than access to radio messages or conversations with individuals. Thirty per cent of the women experienced physical or mental abuse or their spouse's alcohol and/or drug problems. Women reporting such abuse were more than twice as likely to have adequate HIV/AIDS knowledge compared with women reporting no such abuse. We found no relationship between reported household abuse and educational level of woman, husband, occupation of either partner, language or religion. We found no relationship between HIV status and knowledge of HIV and no relationship between HIV status and risk of abuse in the household. However, the total number of HIV patients in our sample was very small.

A study on cognizance of vertical transmission of HIV/AIDS among pregnant women attending antenatal clinic in a tertiary care hospital, Chennai

“…This reflects a high level of awareness among pregnant women attending antenatal clinic at SRMC&RI, which was high when compared to the findings of Sebanti Goswami et al study. 7 The main source of information on HIV/AIDS among pregnant women in our study was television (84%), which agrees with findings of Shrotri A et al 8 This underlines that television was an effective platform in educating the public about AIDS.…”

Awareness of HIV/AIDS among the pregnant women and their husbands attending ANC clinic in a tertiary care centre in Chennai

“…10 In the study by Shroti et al, only 44.6% knew about prevention of HIV which is quite less than the current study (75%). 4 The above finding is due to the fact the current study was conducted more than a decade later than the above study. In another study by Praveena et al, 84% of pregnant women knew about mother to child transmission of HIV and 92.6% knew HIV infection is preventable which are higher than the current study.…”

“…4 Awareness of infected mother to child transmission was high(90%) in a study conducted in Uganda in 2010 which could be due to fact that the campaign called "Healthy Baby" started in Uganda in 2008. 10 In the study by Shroti et al, only 44.6% knew about prevention of HIV which is quite less than the current study (75%).…”

“…3 In a hospital-based study by Shrotri et al in 2001 the 61-68% of the pregnant women knew mother to child transmission of HIV. 4 In a study by Jacqueline Firth et al in antenatal clinics of two rural hospitals in Vellore only 39% of the women were aware about all the modes of transmission and knowledge on preventing mother to child transmission by medication was known only to 13% of the antenatal women. 5 In Tamil Nadu new infections was estimated at 3000-4000 and the prevalence of HIV infection at 0.26% in 2015.…”

Social Factors Affecting Women's Susceptibility to HIV in India

“…In accordance with the previous multivariate models, female respondents who were uneducated, employed, and lived in states with higher rates of seroprevalence displayed higher odds of being HIV positive in comparison to their counterparts. These findings suggest that a low level of education could act as a contributing risk factor, as respondents may have little or no awareness of HIV (Rahbar et al 2007;Shrotri et al 2003;Kalasagar et al 2006) with negative effects on their sexual risk behavior (Firth et al 2010;Godbole and Mehendale 2005 Nonetheless, findings on wealth and age seem to contrast with other results on female participants' sociodemographic characteristics and socioeconomic factors, which suggest that HIV-positive respondents could belong to economically deprived communities as they are less educated than the general population. Female respondents who belonged to the middle/richer wealth categories displayed higher odds of being HIV positive (OR=1.63, CI=1.02-4.72) than those who were poor/poorer.…”