The priority of The Gambia government is to eliminate maternal to child transmission\nof HIV and in line with this priority, the country implemented an antiretroviral\ntherapy (ART) program. With this, all HIV infected pregnant and breastfeeding\nmothers and infants have access to ARV drugs. This study aims to determine the\nprevalence of vertical transmission of HIV among women receiving the ARV drugs.\nDried blood spot samples were collected from 109 HIV-exposed infants enrolled in\n13 PMTCT sites across the country. A qualitative detection of proviral-DNA of HIV-\n1 was performed using the RealTime Abbott PCR assay. Data from 105 mothers were\nanalyzed using SPSS version 16.0 and association of risk factors to PCR results were\nanalyzed using (Crosstabs) Pearson Chi-Square. The p-value of significant was set at\np < 0.05. This study has found that the prevalence of vertical transmission of HIV is\n0.0% (0/64) among women that received the ARV prophylaxis then started ART,\n7.1% (2/28) among mothers that received HIV prophylaxis only, and 38.4% (5/13)\namong women who neither receive HIV-prophylaxis nor ART during pregnancy or\nbreastfeeding. Other risk factors of vertical transmission such as late initiation of\ntreatment, default during treatment and first born of twins were found to be significantly\nassociated with vertical transmission p = 0.001, p = 0.022 and p = 0.000 respectively.\nThis study has found that the early intervention of ART at the onset of\npregnancy through breastfeeding can eliminates Maternal to Child transmission of\nHIV-1and a high risk of vertical transmission was found among women who neither\nreceive prophylaxis nor ART. If the effectiveness of the antiretroviral therapy is\nmaintain, The Gambia, in the near future will attain the WHO�s goal to eliminate\nmaternal to child transmission of HIV.
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