ATTITUDE TOWARDS SEROLOGICAL TESTS FOR INFECTION DURING PREGNANCY

In anticipation of systematic prenatal screening at the antenatal clin ic of Gasthuisberg University Hospital, Leuven, Belgium, the attitude of 500 successive pregnant women towards testing for rubella, toxoplas mosis, hepatitis B virus, HIV and syphilis was studied by means of wri tten questionnaires. All tests were well accepted, toxoplasmosis and r ubella being most (92 and 91%), syphilis and HIV being least (79 and 8 2%) favoured. Refusal was generally associated with lower education, b ut refusal for syphilis and HIV was associated with high education. Ni nety-four percent wanted to be informed of the results of the tests. O nly one woman (0.2%) of those who agreed with testing did not want to know her HIV test result. Pregnant doctors were more reluctant about s creening, in particular for sexually transmitted diseases, whereas nur ses were in favour of it. Written information failed to increase the a cceptance rate, but lowered the number of women without an opinion.