Human immunodeficiency virus seropositivity in children aged six to eighty-four months at Kenyatta National Hospital.

Abstract

To determine the prevalence of the HIV seropositivity in general paediatric emergency admissions at Kenyatta National Hospital, 552 children were studied systematically for four months in 1991.A clinical history was taken and physical examination conducted. The HIV status was determined by use of organ Teknika's Vironostika viral lysate assay for initial two screenings and then a Behring enzygnost anti-HIV-1 synthetic peptide assays a confirmatory assay.Seventy (12.7) of all the children studied were HIV positive, the mean age of the HIV-positive children was 17.5 months while that of the total study population was 23.5 months. HIV seropositivity was not associated with history or parenteral injections. No haemophilia patient was recruited during the study period, and of all the 18 sicklers recruited, none was HIV positive despite multiple blood transfusions. The WHO paediatric Aids Case definition criteria had moderately low sensitivity (55.7), high specificity (85.9) and low positive predictive value (36.4). This was in agreement with observations noted in other studies in East and Central Africa.