Abstract            Volume:4  Issue-2  Year-2016         Original Research Articles

Online ISSN : 2347 - 3215 Issues : 12 per year Publisher : Excellent Publishers Email : editorijcret@gmail.com

Mother to child transmission of HIV is an important mode of infection to the newborns. To eliminate this transmission and virtually control the spread of pediatric HIV, it is important to know the seroprevalence of HIV in pregnancy. Few studies are available from this part of northern India, which reflect the ongoing trends of HIV in pregnant mothers, hence we carried out this study todetermine theseroprevalence of HIV among pregnant women visiting the antenatal clinic at a tertiary centre of north India. Pregnant women in the age group of 15-42 years, visiting antenatal clinic in the department of Obstetrics and Gynecology of Sarojini Naidu Medical College, Agra, Uttar Pradesh were registered, counseled and tested for HIV antibodies. Blood samples were collected from the antenatal women who consented and then were tested for HIV antibodies as per WHO guidelines, from October 2005 to April 2015. Of 30150 pregnant women counseled, 23464 (77.82%) accepted testing. Only 136  were HIV positive. The prevalence of HIV in antenatal women was found to be 0.58%. There was a decreasing trend of HIV prevalence in this population seen over 9.5 years. Most of the women belonged to the sexually active age group of20-24 years (39%) followed by 25–34 years (36%). However, the overall prevalence is slightly higher than the national HIV prevalence, hence it rings a bell of concern as this part of  India comes under the ‘low prevalence state’ category. The seroprevalence found in this region andpopulations were slightly higher than national projection for the country and state. However, it is consistent with the current national trend which shows a decline, concluding that there is a need to strengthen the prevention of mother to child transmission (PMTCT) services by the collaboration of the public and private sectors.

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