Knowledge and attitude of pregnant women towards the utilization of voluntary counselling and testing of HIV/AIDS in Ewekoro LG. Ogun state. Nigeria.

HIV/AIDS have risen to an alarming proportion worldwide. The diseases as claimed millions of lives, inflicting pain and grief, causing fear and uncertainty, and threatening the economy of severely affected nations. Since the... [ view full abstract ]

HIV/AIDS have risen to an alarming proportion worldwide. The diseases as claimed millions of lives, inflicting pain and grief, causing fear and uncertainty, and threatening the economy of severely affected nations. Since the start of the epidermic, over 12.2 million women worlds wide have been infected with HIV and women account for 42% of the 30.6 million adults living with the disease. One of the approaches to curbing the violent spread of this disease is voluntary counseling and testing (VCT).
The study was carried out to know the knowledge and attitude of pregnant women towards the utilization of VCT of HIV/AIDS as well as factors that influence utilization of VCT services.
Convenience sampling technique was used to select 100 respondents. Data analysis was done through use of frequency tables and percentages while 3 hypotheses were tested using chi-square.
Findings from the study showed that virtually all the respondents have adequate knowledge on HIV/AIDS and VCT. However, knowledge deficit on importance of VCT was revealed.
A signiificant relationship was found between the level of education of pregnant women and their desires to utilize VCT services. Pregnant women's knowledge about HIV/AIDS was also found to be significant to their attitude towards VCT while a relationship was found between frequency of antenantal visits and willingness to utilize VCT.
Factors identified by respondents as militating against their decision to utilize VCT services include fear of rejection (87%), fear of stigmatization/discrimination (72%) and lack of confidentiality (65%).
Government and other stake holders should promote empowerment of women to make informed choices about VCT, intensify coordinated and targeted information, education and communication program in order to convince pregnant women to utilize VCT.