Maina Elizabeth Njeri^1,, Rosemary James¹

In Nyeri County, 9.12% of people living with HIV are children (Kenya County Profile Book, 2014). The mortality rate among HIV-infected children is also high, with 13% of all child deaths resulting from AIDS-related complications. Both the government and private partners have come up with a prevention strategy, though faced with numerous challenges and success stories. The study therefore sought to investigate the performance of Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission (PMTCT) projects in Kenya, with a particular focus on Nyeri County. The specific objectives were to investigate how managerial skills, community participation, monitoring and evaluation, and funding affect the performance of PMTCT projects in Nyeri County. The target population consisted of all 22 hospitals in Nyeri County offering PMTCT projects. The respondents were the 184 employees, who included nurses, clinicians, nutritionists, and peer educators. We used stratified random sampling for the sampling process. We selected a sample of 30% from each stratum. The study adopted both descriptive and explanatory research designs. Questionnaires had open-ended and closed-ended questions. We analyzed the quantitative data using descriptive statistics and multiple regression analysis. We also used SPSS version 20 for Windows for data analysis. The findings indicated that managerial skills influenced the performance of PMTCT projects to a very large extent. The success of a project hinges on the relevant management's ability to achieve its main objectives within the stipulated cost, highlighting the crucial role of managerial skills in PMTCT project performance. Funding, monitoring, and evaluation also influenced the performance of PMTCT projects, but only to a large extent. However, we found that community participation had the weakest but most positive influence on the PMTCT project's performance. Therefore, the researcher recommended regular training for managers and other employees involved in PMTCT projects to enhance their productivity, and to initiate community participation during the project's planning phase. Failure to recognize the existence of community members at the initial stages of the project leads to various problems at the advanced stages of project implementation, the worst being rejection at the handover stage. The researcher also recommends the extension of a two-year contract among employees working in PMTCT projects, as this will help reduce the cost of re-training new employees, and the employees who are part of internal evaluators will also be able to easily identify gaps that would have led to poor project performance.

managerial skills, community participation, monitoring and evaluation systems, funding, project performance, pmtct projects