HIV Infection among Children aged two years to less than eighteen years admitted to the Emergency Pediatric Unit in a Tertiary Health facility in Lafia North-Central Nigeria

BACKGROUND: Human Immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a retrovirus that impairs the immune system by attacking the body’s natural defense from infections and diseases. Pediatric HIV continue to be a major public health problem despite the global decline in its seroprevalence rates. The decline in the incidence of new HIV infections is particularly lower in children with a 52% reduction in the last ten years. This is attributed to a wider coverage in the use of antiretroviral therapy (ART) and the prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV (PMTCT) programs. Several programs designed at curtailing mother to child transmission of HIV are yielding positive result. This is not unexpected since most of the HIV infections among children were acquired via maternal to child transmission. With this, the study sets out to determine the prevalence of new HIV infection among patients admitted to the Emergency Pediatrics Unit (EPU) using the provider-initiated testing and counseling approach.
METHODS: A prospective cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted at the mini laboratory attached to the EPU of the Dalhatu Araf Specialist Hospital Lafia Nasarawa State between 1^st August 2017 to 31^st July 2018. Using non-probability sampling, categorical variables were analyzed as frequencies and percentages. The association between categorical variables were analyzed using chi square.
RESULTS: A total of 964 children ranging in age from two to less than eighteen years were screened. The total number of males was 550 (57.1%) while females was 414 (42.9%) with a male to female ratio of 1.3:1. Five (0.5%) children were newly diagnosed with HIV of the 964 children tested for the infection.
CONCLUSION: The incidence of HIV infection among children admitted into our Emergency Pediatric Unit was 0.5%, comparable to some earlier reports.