Male partner involvement in prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa: Successes, challenges and way forward

Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest number of mother to child transmissions of HIV. PMTCT programme plays a big role in reducing the MTCT nevertheless its effectiveness in sub-Saharan Africa depends on involvement of male partners considering the fact that men are decision makers in African families. They make important decisions that have big impact on women’s health. Male partner involvement has been seen to increase uptake of PMTCT services and their involvement underscores their importance in reducing HIV infection in children. Recently many sub-Saharan countries adopted male partner involvement in PMTCT programme with an aim of increasing the uptake of PMTCT services. The programme has made some progress in improving the effectiveness of PMTCT services. On the other hand the strategy is facing a lot of challenges, the biggest being low male partner involvement. This article therefore seeks to review the successes and challenges faced by male involvement in sub-Saharan Africa. It also proposes the way forward in order to improve its effectiveness. We used peer reviewed articles of research studies conducted in sub-Saharan Africa and other related reliable sources of data to write the paper.