Seroprevalence of hiv infection among antenatal women at a private specialist hospital in Onitsha, Anambra state, southeast, Nigeria.

Objective: The objective of this study was to determine the seroprevalence of HIV I &II infection among women who booked at an Onitshaprivate specialist hospital using rapid ELISA kits that detect HIV I & II antibodies.Patients and methods: All the women who were on a booking visit at Grace Specialist Hospital Nkpor Onitsha Southeast Nigeria werecounselled and offered HIV screening by ELISA method and confirmation by algorithm method using Determine and Statpak parallel tests.Result: Of the 2996 women who came for a booking visit during the study period, 2993 of them partook in this study thereby giving an uptakerate of 99.9%. The age range of the women was 15 – 41 years with a mean of 28.3±4.5 years. One hundred and nine of the women testedpositive to HIV I & II giving prevalence rate of 3.6%. HIV seropositivity occurred most among women at the third decade of life andnulliparous women. There was a significant association between the age distribution and HIV seropositivity (X2 = 37.67; df = 5; p = 0.000044),and parity distribution and HIV seropositivity (X2 = 17.42; df = 5; p = 0.007763)Conclusion: The seroprevalence of HIV among the anatenatal women was high. The test is highly acceptable to the women. Therefore it is veryfeasible to establish routine antenatal HIV screening in private hospitals which will also serve as a channel of recruiting women into PMTCT ofHIV/AIDS