Abstract:


"Introduction: Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) is an infection that affect the bodys immune system and it is at a high rate, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. Also, as it is known that HIV can be transmitted from mother to her baby, therefore different measures have been implemented such as prevention of mother to child transmission programs to ensure the baby is born without the infection. In the case of geophagy, women develop soil-eating behaviour (geophagy) when they are pregnant and these geophagy practices cause some hazardous effects such as anaemia helminth infection and other effects.

Method: the study included pregnant women with HIV who attended the care and treatment clinic (CTC) at Bugando Medical Centre. The questionnaire was used to obtain the required data. Data analysis was conducted using STATA and it was summarised by percentage and presented in tables and charts.

Results: A total of 64 pregnant women with HIV were enrolled in this study, in which the prevalence of geophagy practice was 35(54.7%) pregnant women. Majority of the pregnant women 50(78.1%) were not having any knowledge concerning effects of geophagy practices while few of them 14(21.9%) were aware of the hazard effects related with geophagy practices and they were able to mention them whereas 7(10.9%) pregnant women mentioned anaemia, 10(15.6%) helminth infection 4(6.3%), abdominal pain,3(4.7%) mentioned appendix. The majority of geophagic women showed good adherence 30(46.9%) while few 5(7.8%) also non-geophagic women 22(34.4%) had good adherence and few of them showed poor adherence 7(10.9%).

Conclusion: Geophagy practices are common especially for pregnant women as from the findings more than half of the participants practiced geophagy among which few of them are aware of some of the hazardous effects of the geophagy practices but while others do not know the geophagy has any effects to their health and their unborn child."