Malnutrition among HIV-positive pregnant women; magnitude and determinants, in health centers of Addis Ababa Ethiopia
Creators: name: Behailu, Zinet
Publisher: name: National Academic Digital Repository of Ethiopia
Year: 2018

description: Introduction: Good nutrition increases resistance to infection and disease, improves energy, and this makes a person generally stronger and more productive. Healthy nutrition is important throughout life but particularly so when a woman is pregnant. As pregnancy affects the metabolism of nutrients, maternal diet must provide sufficient energy and nutrients to meet the mother's usual requirements as well as the needs of the growing fetus. When an HIV-positive woman becomes pregnant, additional nutritional considerations are warrant. Though in Addis Ababa there is lack study of HIV positive pregnant mothers on the prevalence of malnutrition, which is, depend on them. Objective: The objective of this study was to assess the prevalence and determinants of under nutrition among HIV positive pregnant women attending prevention of Mother-to-Child transmission of HIV clinics in health centers of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Methodology: Cross-sectional study was conducted from 1Nov 2017-Jun 2018 on prevention of Mother-to-Child transmission of HIV clients in Addis Ababa, a capital city of Ethiopia. Simple random sampling technique was used to get 342 prevention of Mother-to-Child transmission of HIV clients as a study population. Data was collected using pretested, structured, and semi-structured questionnaire, anthropometry measure, dietary assessment method and the data was analyzed using Epi.data version 3.1 and SPSS version 22. The study was provided information on Prevalence of under nutrition and its determinants in health centers was been measured. Result: The overall prevalence of under nutrition among the study participant was found to be 34.2%, of those 33.6% was moderate malnutrition. Those who have experiance for last one month of less than three frequency of serving including snacks were 3.2 times more likely to be undernourished than those more than and equal to three frequency of serving including snacks (AOR=3.2; 95% CI: 1.14-8.88). In addition, 350 cells/μl or below CD4 T-cell level of HIV positive pregnant mother were almost 3 times (AOR=2.50; 95% CI: 1.27-4.94) more likely to be undernourished than those who had above 350 cells/μl CD4 T-cell level. Conclusion and recommendation: There was high prevalence of undernutrition among HIV positive pregnant mother. The finding indicates that higher level of CD4 count is associated with better nutritional status, while improved eating habit were associated with lower proportion of undernutrition during pregnancy. Thus, the factors associated with under nutrition are potentially modifiable through interventions targeting improved frequency of food serving and increasing ART clinical care and promotion of improved eating habit through prenatal dietary advice. To overcome this nutritional problem the government should ratify need to give special attention of economical and nutritional support HIV positive pregnant mothers and health professionals also give them special care and when they get under nutritious mother they have to put them in immediate nutritional therapy programme.