Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV and HIV-Free Survival in Swaziland: A Community-Based Household Survey

In Swaziland, no data are available on the rates of HIV infection and HIV-free survival among children at the end of the breastfeeding period. We performed a national crosssectional community survey of children born 18-24 months prior to the study, in randomly selected constituencies in all 4 administrative regions of Swaziland, from April to June 2015. Mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) of HIV and HIV-free survival rates were calculated for all HIV-exposed children. The overall HIV-free survival rate at 18-24 months was 95.9% (95% CI 94.1-97.2). The estimated proportion of HIV infected children among known HIV-exposed children was 3.6% (95% CI 2.4-5.2). Older maternal age, delivering at a health facility, and receiving antenatal antiretroviral drugs were independently associated with reduced risk for child infection or death. The Swaziland program for prevention of MTCT achieved high HIV-free survival (95.9%) and low MTCT (3.6%) rates at 18-24 months of age when Option A (infant prophylaxis) of the WHO 2010 guidelines was implemented.