Men are still running away from HIV screening when their partners are pregnant, despite the proven benefits for both and the unborn child.
All women attending ANC clinics in Kenya are usually tested for HIV to prevent mother-to-child transmission.
Experts say screening mothers alone is not enough and male partners also need to be tested.
However, the Ministry of Health’s data analytics platform shows in 2020, only two per cent of men took HIV test while their partners were pregnant.
This is a drop from 2015 when four per cent of men with partners were screened at ANC clinics.
The Guidelines for Prevention of Mother to Child Prevention of HIV/Aids in Kenya say pregnancy presents an opportunity to identify HIV infection and engage both partners in HIV treatment for their own health and the health of their future children.
“All pregnant women should be encouraged to learn their HIV infection status, as well as that of their sexual partners,” the guidelines say.
Mother-to-child transmission is about 10.8 per cent of all births, the Ministry of Health says.
The guidelines note there is no reason for fear because in most cases the pregnant woman and their partner will not have HIV infection.
It is also possible that one partner tests positive and the other one negative.
“In Kenya, 44 per cent of married/cohabiting HIV positive persons have an HIV negative spouse . Therefore, knowing the HIV infection status of one’s partner is critical,” the guidelines say.
Several researchers have sought to explain why men run away from HIV testing during pregnancy.
“The moment male partners are seen coming with their wives to ANC/PMTCT, then the neighborhood tends to imagine that something is wrong with the couple,” says Brian Barasa from University of South Africa, who last year reviewed 19 articles on this subject.
Oddly, Ministry of Health’s epidemiologist Dr Elvis Oyugi in 2015 found that in Kisumu, male involvement in HIV testing at ANC clinics was high at 10 per cent.
“One explanation for this could be that these men were already aware of their HIV-infection status, and therefore less apprehensive of the HIV test outcome,” Oyugi and his colleagues said.
They said studies from Uganda and Ethiopia also showed that men who already knew their HIV status were more ready to accompany their wives to clinics and take the test together.
“Only 22 per cent of the women in our study were accompanied by the male partner to the ANC despite 96 per cent of them reporting that they verbally informed the male partner on the need to visit the ANC,” the study says.
Their study, Male partner involvement in efforts to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV in Kisumu County, Western Kenya, was published in the Pan African Medical journal.
-Edited by SKanyara