Abstract
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Abstract; Background; ; HIV testing is the cornerstone for all HIV care and support services, including Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission of HIV (PMTCT). The earlier women of reproductive age know their HIV status, the better informed their reproductive decisions and their infants’ outcomes may be. We analyzed trends in known current HIV status among pregnant women attending their first antenatal care visit (ANC1) in Uganda, 2012-2016.; ; Methods; ; We conducted secondary data analysis using District Health Information Software2 data on all pregnant women who came for ANC1 during 2012-2016. Women who brought documentation with them to ANC1 of an HIV test within the previous four weeks or an HIV care card as evidence of being in HIV care were considered as knowing their HIV status in antenatal care clinics. We calculated proportions of women with known current HIV status at ANC1, and described the linear trends both nationally and regionally. We used improved Poisson regression with generalized linear models to test the statistical significance of the trend.; ; Results; ; There was no significant difference in the number of women that attended ANC1 visits over the years 2012 to 2016. The proportion of women that came with known HIV status was highest at 6.9% in 2016 and this was an increasing trend (p<0.001). Most of the regions had an increase in trend except the West Nile and Mid-Eastern (p<0.001). The proportion of women that came knowing their HIV positive status at ANC1 is slightly higher than that of women that were newly tested HIV positive at ANC1 in 2015 and 2016.; ; Conclusion; ; Although the gap in women that come at ANC1 without knowing their HIV positive status might be reducing, still a large proportion of women who were infected with HIV did not know their status before their ANC1 HIV test, indicating a major public health gap. Therefore, more efforts are still required to achieve full PMTCT. In light of the considerable number that comes not knowing their HIV positive status at ANC1, we recommend advocacy for early ANC attendance and hence HIV testing so that timely PMTCT interventions can be made.