Antenatal Care and AIDS Knowledge among Married Women

[Guest guest]

Antenatal Care and AIDS Knowledge among Married Women

USHA SAMBAMOORTHI, RAKKEE THIMOTHY, WENHUI WEI, S IRUDAYA RAJAN

Economic and Political Weekly February 14, 2004

This paper set out to explore the relationship between antenatal care and AIDS

awareness and comprehensive knowledge about ways of preventing AIDS. We also

examined the impact of socioeconomic status, demographic characteristics and

region of residence on the rates of awareness and knowledge and whether

disparities in awareness and knowledge by antenatal care can be explained by

differences in socio-economic status or other variables within a multivariate

framework. This is the first study to examine prenatal care utilisation and

awareness and knowledge about HIV among married women using nationally

representative data.

The rates of awareness and knowledge among married women remain disturbingly

low. Our results also suggest that most Indian women lack comprehensive

knowledge about ways to prevent AIDS. However, an optimistic finding is that an

overwhelming majority of women (95 per cent) did not have any misperception

about how HIV is spread and seem to understand that HIV is most often

transmitted through sexual contact and intravenous drug use. These results also

suggest that outreach and intervention efforts need to focus on promoting

comprehensive knowledge about prevention of AIDS.

Our results suggest that there is a strong relationship between antenatal care

and AIDS awareness and knowledge. For this population, the benefits of prenatal

care – which is likely to serve as a key gateway to HIV testing and zidovudine

prophylaxis to reduce vertical transmission – underscore the urgent need to

improve access to and use of prenatal care services.

An interesting finding with significant policy implications of the study is the

high rates of knowledge among married women who had heard about AIDS through

mass media such as television, radio and cinemas. In countries like India, where

majority of the population lives in poverty, individuals rely heavily on

broadcast media. It seems like the broadcast media has the greatest potential in

reducing knowledge gaps among married women and can play a critical role in

preventing the spread of AIDS among this vulnerable segment of the population.

As mentioned in the introduction, the positive effect of socioeconomic status on

AIDS awareness and knowledge has been documented in the literature. Such

differences in access to innovations based primarily on socio-economic status

have long been documented in social research [ 1962]. For instance, the

review of diffusion research by suggests that those who demonstrate

greater innovativeness and have a higher likelihood of adopting new ideas tend

to have greater socio-economic status. Thus, one could expect that over time,

these socio-economic differences in awareness and knowledge will disappear.

We also found that states with high rates of HIV among antenatal women had

higher rates of antenatal care, awareness and knowledge compared to other

states. Although these findings are encouraging, the high prevalent states need

to assess the content and type of their prevention efforts and find effective

ways of promoting comprehensive knowledge among this very vulnerable segment of

the general Indian population.

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[A pdf copy of the complete article is available from the moderator]