Abstract:

Background: Mother to child transmission (MTCT) of HIV accounts for 14% of all new HIV infections worldwide, and may occur during pregnancy, labor and delivery of breastfeeding. East and South Africa contributes 59% of all new pediatric infections globally. Current efforts are directed to decrease risk of HIV infections to exposed infants, the interventions are health education on HIV and Nevirapine based prophylaxis.

Methods: This was a cross sectional analytical study which was carried between August 2018 to February 2019 at Makongoro clinic. 200 mother and child pair were recruited. Data was collected using a pre tested questionnaire to obtain information on awareness of Nevirapine in reducing risk of HIV transmission to exposed child, DBS results taken on sixth week of life, and risk factors to infect an exposed child such as, mothers’ viral load before birth, breastfeeding manner, nevirapine dosage, and transparency. The statistical package for social science (SPSS version 20 was used to analyze quantitative and qualitative data.

Results: Majority of exposed children were sero negative n=196 (98%) on the DBS results, of whom mothers had low viral load majority being undetected level n=138 (69%), and only 1.5% having viral load above 1000 predisposing their children to test positive on DBS. Transparency was also an issue affecting dosage at some instant 90%, proper breastfeeding was also missed to some mothers 69%. But however the matter of viral load seemed to play a great role.

Conclusion and recommendation: High viral load influences the sero positive status of exposed infants, it is better HIV infected mothers are diagnosed early and take ARV as recommended to reduce transmission risk. They should also be advised well on when to conceive that it when the viral load are below detected level to reduce transmission risk.