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Nutritional Knowledge, Practices, Nutritional Status and The Associated Factors Among HIV Positive Mothers on Antiretroviral Therapy: Evidence From Cross Sectional Survey in Abay Choman Health Centers, Western Ethiopia

Habtamu Fekadu Gemede1, Feyisa Kaba, Mebrate Dufera2*

Background: Lack of nutritional knowledge, inadequate nutritional practice and under nutrition in HIV positive mothers contribute to accelerate the progression of HIV/AIDS.

Methods: An institutional based cross-sectional study was conducted on nutritional knowledge, practice and status among 394 HIV positive mothers by systematic sampling techniques in Abay Choman health centers from February 2019 to August 2019. Structured and pre-tested questionnaires were used to collect data and analysis was done using SPSS for windows version 22.0. Binary and multiple logistic regressions were computed to identify the presence of association at p<0.05. 

Results: This study revealed that more than half (58.9%) and (54.1%) of participants had good nutritional knowledge and practice, respectively. The prevalence of underweight, normal weight and overweight of the respondents were 31.2%, 59.1% and 9.7%, respectively. Age of mothers (AOR=2.1, 95% CI: 1.01, 4.6), marital status (AOR=4.26, 95% CI: 1.23, 14.81), educational level (AOR=3.57, 95%CI: 1.99, 6.43) and average monthly income (AOR=1.69, 95% CI: 1.03, 2.79) were significantly associated with level of nutritional knowledge during multivariate analysis. Educational level (AOR=3.83, 95%CI: 2.06, 7.13), family size (AOR=0.43, 95% CI: 0.23, 0.82), average monthly income (AOR=2.14, 95% CI: 1.10, 4.17) and mothers’ occupation (AOR=0.40, 95%CI: 0.22, 0.71) were significantly associated with the level of nutritional practice. Furthermore, marital status (AOR=0.34, 95% CI: 0.13, 0.86), educational level (AOR=0.54, 95% CI: 0.29, 0.99), average monthly income (AOR=0.44, 95% CI: 0.23, 0.85) and mothers’ occupation (AOR=1.86, 95%CI: 1.06, 3.26) were significantly associated with nutritional status.

Conclusions: The level of nutritional knowledge and practice of respondents was poor and their under nutrition was higher. This is associated to educational level, average monthly income, mothers’ occupation and marital status of the respondents. Therefore, health centers should have to work in the above gaps of nutritional knowledge and practice of HIV positive mothers through awareness creation in study area.