Pregnant Women’s Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice Towards the Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission of HIV/AIDS in Dil Chora Referral Hospital, Dire Dawa, Eastern Ethiopia: A Cross-Sectional Study

BACKGROUND: According to a WHO report, HIV/AIDS continues to be a major global public health issue, having claimed 36.3 million in 2021 and 37.7 million people living with HIV at the end of 2020, more than two-thirds of whom were in the WHO African Region including sub-Saharan Africa. Among sub-Saharan Africa, Ethiopia is one of the countries that face an HIV/AIDS epidemic with an estimated 90,000 HIV-positive pregnant women, 14,000 HIV-positive births, 800,000 AIDS orphans, and 28,000 AIDS deaths annually. Thus, this study assessed the knowledge, attitude, and practice of pregnant women towards the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV. METHODS: A hospital-based cross-sectional study was conducted in Dil Chora Referral Hospital among 242 pregnant women. The simple random sampling method was used to collect the data and respondents were interviewed face to face by using a standard and structured questionnaire. The quality of the data was assured by questionnaire pretesting, translation, and retranslation. After the collection of the data, each questionnaire was thoroughly reviewed for consistency, and completeness by the data collectors, supervisor, and investigators. Then, the data were inserted into Epi Info v3.5 and analyzed using SPSS v24. Descriptive statistics were employed to examine the findings, and the result was presented using tables, charts, and graphs. RESULTS: Two-third (66.7%) of the pregnant women had good knowledge and the remaining one-third (33.3%) had poor knowledge towards mother to child transmission of HIV/AIDS and its prevention. A good attitude has been observed among a majority of the respondents (71%) towards the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS. Unlike the above, only half of the pregnant women (50%) had good practice towards the prevention of mothers to child transmission of HIV/AIDS. CONCLUSION: This study found that half of pregnant women (50%) had poor practice and around one-third of them (29%) had negative attitudes towards the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS. Therefore, creating a positive attitude and good practice among pregnant women are the most important components for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS.