Prevention of mother to child transmission of Human Immunodeficiency Virus: The Nigerian perspective

Abstract

Despite the proven effectiveness of the prevention of mother to child transmission (PMTCT) of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) program, Nigeria currently has the highest burden of vertical transmission of HIV in the world due to poor coverage of the PMTCT program partly as a result of poor knowledge of PMTCT interventions amongst healthcare providers in the country. This paper aims at making information on PMTCT interventions more readily available to healthcare providers in developing countries. The internet was searched using Google and Google scholar. In addition, relevant electronic journals from the Universities library including PubMed and Scirus, Medline, Cochrane library, and World Health Organization (WHO)'s Hinari were used. There was paucity of published work on PMCT from Nigeria. Most of the information concerning PMCT in Nigeria was obtained from technical reports from the Federal Ministry of Health and WHO. It is expected that this article will help in improving healthcare providers' knowledge of PMTCT interventions and thus help in the urgently needed rapid scale-up of PMTCT services in Nigeria.