Mother to child transmission of HIV (MTCT) remains
a significant public health problem in Western Kenya. Male
partner testing at the antenatal clinic (ANC) has been cited as a
key strategy to reduce MTCT. The Western Kenya region has a
high MTCT rate of 15% but low rate of testing for men at the
ANC. We sought to describe the strategies for improving this
low level of male partner testing. We conducted a facility-based
cross sectional study in four health centres between February and
April 2015. We interviewed women who were aged ≥18 years
and had a living child aged ≤12 months, who were attending
immunization clinic at the four health centers. A pre-tested
standardized questionnaire was used to retrospectively collect
information on strategies to improve male partner HIV testing at
the ANC. Data was analyzed using Epi Info7. We performed
descriptive statistics and further calculated prevalence odds ratios
(PORs) and their 95% confidence intervals (CI) and factors with
p-values ≤ 0.05 were considered statistically significant.We
interviewed 216 participants, whose mean age was 26.1 years
(±5.5 years). There were 119 (55%) who had attained post
primary education, 32 (15%) were employed, 189 (87.5%) were
married and 204 (94.4%) had attended public health facilities for
ANC services. There were 31 (14%) women whose male partners
had accompanied them to the ANC and undertook a HIV test.
Formal invitation of the men to attend ANC (POR 3.1, CI=1.1-
8.3) was associated with male partner HIV testing. Few men
tested for HIV at the ANC. Formal invitation of the men to
attend ANC should be implemented as a strategy to improve
male partner HIV testing at the ANC.