Reproductive Health and Wellness

Integration of traditional birth attendants into prevention of mother-to-child transmission at primary health facilities in Kaduna, North-West Nigeria

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One of the fundamental challenges to implementing
successful prevention of mother-tochild
transmission (PMTCT) programs in
Nigeria is the uptake of PMTCT services at
health facilities. Several issues usually discourage
many pregnant women from receiving
antenatal care services at designated health
facilities within their communities. The CRS
Nigeria PMTCT Project funded by the Global
Fund in its Round 9 Phase 1 in Nigeria, sought
to increase demand for HIV counseling and
testing services for pregnant women at 25 supported
primary health centers (PHCs) in
Kaduna State, North-West Nigeria by integrating
traditional birth attendants (TBAs) across
the communities where the PHCs were located
into the project. Community dialogues were
held with the TBAs, community leaders and
women groups. These dialogues focused on
modes of mother to child transmission of HIV
and the need for TBAs to refer their clients to
PHCs for testing. Subsequently, data on number
of pregnant women who were counseled,
tested and received results was collected on a
monthly basis from the 25 facilities using the
national HIV/AIDS tools. Prior to this integration,
the average number of pregnant women
that were counseled, tested and received
results was 200 pregnant women across all the
25 health facilities monthly. After the integration
of TBAs into the program, the number of
pregnant women that were counseled, tested
and received results kept increasing month
after month up to an average of 1500 pregnant
women per month across the 25 health facilities.
TBAs can thus play a key role in improving
service uptake and utilization for pregnant
women at primary health centers in the community
– especially in the context of HIV/AIDS.
They thus need to be integrated, rather than
alienated, from primary healthcare service
delivery.

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Publication Information

: ., 2015

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Language

English

ISSN

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Subject(s)

Traditional Birth Attendants
HIV/AIDS
Prevention of mother-to-child transmission
Community mobilization
Primary health facilities
Traditional birth

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Article

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