WEIGHTS OF INFANTS BORN TO HIV INFECTED MOTHERS: A PROSPECTIVE COHORT STUDY IN FEDERAL MEDICAL CENTRE, OWERRI, IMO STATE

Gloria Eberechukwu Echendu, Chinelo C. Vincent, Julia Ibebuike, Maria Asodike, Ngozi Naze, Eleonu Priscilla Chinedu, Bright Ohale and Emmanuel Ifeanyi Obeagu

ABSTRACT

The study is a cohort study of Anthropometric Indices of Infants Born to HIV infected mothers at Federal Medical Centre (FMC) Owerri, which aimed at, ascertaining the maternal outcome(s) of HIV infection. The study adopted five research questions and five hypotheses, which revolved around the anthropometric indices of infant. The study’s theory was anchored on the Health Belief Model (HBM). The population for the study comprises all the sero-positive and sero-negative mothers who gave consent to the study. The research design is a cohort design with a sample size of 182 infants selected from the two groups of women (positive and negative HIV mothers) using purposive census sampling technique. Anthropometric data collected were presented using frequency and percentages while the hypotheses were tested using t-test at 0.05 level of significance done with the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 24.0. The findings revealed among others that more infants born of seropositive mothers had lower birth weight, lower weight after 6 weeks.

Keywords: Weights, infants, HIV, mothers.