risk factors impacting on the spread of hiv among pregnant women ...

RISK FACTORS IMPACTING ON THE SPREAD OF HIV AMONG PREGNANT WOMEN IN THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION
1. SURVEY METHODOLOGY
1.1. GENERAL QUESTIONS
The Project’s Terms of Reference were developed jointly by the North-West Regional Centre for
AIDS Prevention and Control and WHO Regional Office for Europe. The AIDS Centre developed
and guided research methods and procedures as well as the technical and financial project documentation.
These tasks were co-performed by the Stellit Public Organization for Social Projects.
The investigation was carried out in five regions of the Russian Federation in the cities of
Yekaterinburg, Irkutsk, Kaliningrad, St Petersburg, and Tver.
Project time frame: 1 November 2005 – 1 August 2006
Within the project framework an introductory workshop was organized in St Petersburg in January
2006 for representatives of the participating regions. The participants delivered presentations on HIV
in their respective regions based on traditional surveillance data. In particular, they focused on HIV
cases among women (number of cases, trends, transmission routes, proportion of pregnant women).
The participants discussed the project concept and developed survey protocols for the project areas.
1.2. SURVEY SAMPLE
The target group was women who were first registered as HIV-positive in 2004-2006 and sought
antenatal care at medical facilities (pregnancy monitoring, termination or delivery). The sample size
is presented in Table 1.
Table 1
Sample size, by region, %
Region Sample size Percentage
St Petersburg 151 19.9
Kaliningrad 150 19.8
Yekaterinburg 153 20.2
Irkutsk 147 19.4
Tver 157 20.7
Total: 758 100.0
1.3. SURVEY TOOLS
The principal document used in the investigation was a specially designed standardized questionnaire
based on the recommendations of WHO and Family Health International for sentinel behavioural
studies as a part of second-generation epidemiological HIV surveillance in various countries
of the world. Most indicators included in the questionnaire had been piloted in prior investigations
11