Background: Breastfeeding is the normative and culturally accepted way of feeding newborn babies. Breastfeeding by HIV mothers raises a lot of concern because of the risk of transmission of HIV in their babies. There is also the risk of malnutrition and transmission of diarrhoeal disease if a mother does not breastfeed. Therefore, the dangers of not breastfeeding must be balanced against the risk of HIV transmission before feeding HIV exposed infants. This study was carried out to determine the infant feeding practices of HIV positive mothers attending care at Federal Medical Centre (FMC) Owerri and the outcome in their babies
Method: The study involved a cross sectional prospective survey of one hundred and fifty seven HIV
positive mothers and their infants.
Results: Out of 157 HIV positive mothers studied, 143(91.1%) practiced exclusive replacement feeding,
8(5.1%) practiced mixed feeding while 6(3.8%) breastfed exclusively. However, about 2.1% of the babies on exclusive replacement feeding were HIV positive while 25% of the babies on mixed feeding were HIV positive. All exclusively breastfed infants were HIV negative. The relationship between infant mode of feeding and HIV DNA result was statistically significant (x=13.093, p=0.001)
Conclusion:
Exclusive breastfeeding rate among HIV positive women from this study was low despite the national policy of exclusive breast feeding in HIV positive women provided they received antiretroviral medication. This implies that most HIV positive mothers do not adhere to national guideline and are still scared of the risk of transmitting HIV virus to their babies from breastfeeding.