RESEARCH ARTICLE
HIV Screening and Awareness Survey for Pregnant Women in a Remote Area in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China
Yuping Sun 1, Karlene Hewan-Lowe 2, Qiang Wu 3, Jiang Yu 4, Zhiqiu Guo 4, Yali Han 5, Yujiang Fan 6, Xianfang Qin 6, Ping Xu 7, Janati Bolatihan 7, Mayinuer Hoshaerbai 8, Luping Yuan 8, Heng Hong*, 2
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2011Volume: 5
First Page: 96
Last Page: 101
Publisher ID: TOAIDJ-5-96
DOI: 10.2174/1874613601105010096
Article History:
Received Date: 21/3/2011Revision Received Date: 11/8/2011
Acceptance Date: 25/8/2011
Electronic publication date: 30/11/2011
Collection year: 2011
open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.
Abstract
Objective:
The number of people infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in China has increased in recent years. HIV screening for pregnant women was performed in a remote area in Xinjiang, as an effort to promote universal HIV screening in pregnant women and to help prevention of mother-to-child transmission.
Methods:
Pregnant women in Burqin and Jeminay Counties in Xinjiang were offered free voluntary HIV screening. Local mid-level medical workers were trained to use Determine® HIV-1/2 kit for HIV screening. All the tested pregnant women signed a consent form, received HIV education material, and participated in an HIV knowledge survey.
Results:
All the 890 pregnant women receiving HIV test had negative result. Among these women, 67.6% were Kazakh and 40.9% were farmers. Survey of HIV knowledge showed that these women's awareness about mother-to-child transmission was limited. The levels of HIV knowledge were related with ethnic background, age, education and profession of the pregnant women.
Conclusion:
The results suggested that HIV infection had not become a significant problem among the pregnant women in this remote area of Xinjiang, but continued efforts to improve the awareness of HIV, especially the knowledge about mother-to-child transmission of HIV, in pregnant women were needed.