A GENDER - INCLUSIVENESS IN PMTCT : MODEL PRESENTATION

The paper offers a comprehensive review of the current discourse on the prevention of mother to child infection in HIV/AIDS. Within this, a special focus is given to South Africa and modifiable challenges to the effective implementation of programs of prev ention are offered. The review affirms the lack of agreement within previous research about the range of consistent barriers to implementation and equally importantly, the range of interventions that can be effected to improve engagement in prevention prog rammes. The paper also presents a literature review, which focuses much more specifically on related literary sources that look at the factors that play an important part in determining patterns of PMTCT service uptake. As acknowledged earlier, research on the uptake of PMTCT confirms that usage remains unexplainably low and more notably, the South African picture is characterised by less success than is acceptable. One of the key issues of concern has been the limited involvement that male partners have had with regard to PMTCT service usage even in the face of research that shows that spousal involvement and/or the involvement of partners offers noteworthy potential in motivating affected pregnant women to take up PMTCT services. To foreground this noted knowledge - gap, the current review of literature aims to provide a comprehensive overview of current viewpoints and existing research evidence, to determine prominent viewpoints in the study area. In addition to the synthesis function, the review was con cerned with drawing attention to the range of previously published challenges that exist when implementing PMTCT