Reproductive Health Needs of Women Living with HIV/AIDS in Yaounde, Cameroon

Abstract

The population plagued with the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Cameroon is young, a generation that may desire or control fertility. For those who may become pregnant, the desire to have children may not be there. We carried out this study to look at the picture of the reproductive health needs of women living with HIV/AIDS in our setting. In this cross-sectional non-analytic design that lasted for three years, we employed both qualitative and quantitative methods to collect data from them after receiving ethical clearance (N221/CM/2009) from the National Ethics Committee. Consenting HIV infected women who were attending the “HIV Day Care” clinics and those who delivered and were in the post partum wards in four of our major hospitals in Yaounde were enrolled. Interviews were individualized. We used both CSPro version 4.1 and Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 19.0 softwares for data analysis. Four hundred and fifteen (415) women were enrolled; the mean age was 29 ± 7.8 years; the most represented age group was 24 -29 years. They were single (36.14%), well educated (5 out of 10 had attained university level of education), 61.20% revealed that their partners knew their HIV status, 82.4% believed that screening for cancer of the cervix was necessary for their status and 47.70% would want to be screened for some or all STIs. About 36.86% had the desire to have children, 57.1% of those who delivered did not plan to have the pregnancies out of which 82% would have wanted a modern method of contraception but did not have (82% unmet needs). Modern contraceptive use was associated with age and individual characteristics such as level of education. It was 64.34% among women who had secondary level of education and below as against 35.66% among those who had high school level of education and above. Contraceptive use was also high among women who were unmarried as against those who were married (89.64% vs 10.36%). The desire to have children decreased as age increased (43.85% vs 18.79%) and was lower among married women compared to those who were single (13.01% versus 49.64%). These women were found to have high unmet needs for modern contraception and showed interest in STIs and cervical cancer screening.