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Maternity Waiting Home Use by HIV-positive Pregnant Women in Zambia: Opportunity for Improved Prevention of Maternal to Child Transmission of HIV
Journal article   Open access

Maternity Waiting Home Use by HIV-positive Pregnant Women in Zambia: Opportunity for Improved Prevention of Maternal to Child Transmission of HIV

Rachael Bonawitz, Kathleen Lucy McGlasson, Jeanette L Kaiser, Thandiwe Ngoma, Jody Lori, Carol Boyd, Godfrey Biemba, Davidson H Hamer and Nancy A Scott
International journal of MCH and AIDS, v 8(1), pp 1-10
01 Jan 2019
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21106/ijma.267
PMID: 30899603
url
https://doi.org/10.21106/ijma.267View
Published, Version of Record (VoR) Open

Abstract

Zambia PMTCT HIV Maternity waiting homes
Maternity waiting homes (MWHs), defined as residential lodging near health facilities, are an intervention to improve access to maternal care recommended by the World Health Organization. Little is known about utilization of MWHs by HIV-positive women. This paper describes: 1) maternal awareness and utilization of MWHs in rural Zambia among HIV-positive women, and 2) health outcomes for HIV-positive women and their infants with regards to utilization of MWHs. Data were collected from recently delivered women (delivered after 35 weeks in the previous 12 months) living >9.5 km from 40 health facilities in rural Zambia. For our analysis, primary outcomes were compared between self-identified HIV-positive and HIV-negative women in the sample. Primary outcomes include: 1) awareness of MWHs and 2) utilization of MWHs. We summarized simple descriptive statistics, stratified by maternal self-reported HIV status. We conducted bivariate analyses using chi-square tests, t-tests and Wilcoxon rank sum test. Among 2,381 women, 50 (2.4%) self-identified as HIV-positive. HIV-positive women were older and had more pregnancies and children than HIV-negative women (p<0.001). There was no difference in awareness of MWHs, but HIV-positive women were more likely to use a MWH than HIV-negative women. There was no difference in receipt of infant antiretroviral prophylaxis between women who did or did not stay at a MWH. Though HIV prevalence in this sample was lower than expected, MWHs may represent a useful strategy to improve prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV in high prevalence, low-resource settings.

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