Coverage of Antenatal Syphilis Screening and Predictors for Not Being Screened in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

In Brief Objectives: To measure the coverage of antenatal syphilis screening and identify factors related to women not being screened. Goal: To assess the syphilis control program in Mongolia. Study design: Antenatal care records of women in 16 antenatal care clinics of 6 districts were reviewed. Additionally, postpartum women were interviewed to identify potential factors for not being screened. Results: Among 3519 antenatal records, the coverage of syphilis screening was 77.7%. Of 2735 screened women, 54 (2.0%) had reactive serological results and subsequently received treatment. Four late antenatal care comers delivered infants with congenital syphilis. Being unscreened was significantly associated with late antenatal care (odds ratio OR = 2.6), lack of knowledge (OR = 5.5), history of previous sexually transmitted infection (OR = 3.7), and living far from screening services (OR = 4.9). Conclusions: The coverage of antenatal syphilis screening is still low, with poor contact tracing. More efforts are needed to promote early antenatal care visit and improve syphilis screening systems. Antenatal syphilis screening in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, has low coverage with poor contact tracing. Lack of knowledge and living far from syphilis screening services strongly increased the risk of not being screened.