Knowledge attitude and practice study of HIV/AIDS in Kirkuk

Abstract

Introduction: patients with HIV/AIDS in developing countries have to face discrimination in the society and in health care system .The knowledge of people in such countries also not good enough as many of them don’t know the main information about this disease and some of them get infected because of lack of information Objective: To examine the knowledge of people about HIV/AIDS in Kirkuk city among different educational background. Subjects and Methods: A structured questionnaire form related to HIV/AIDS was administrated on the 6000 person included (primary, secondary, high school, university student and employers as well as public people). The questionnaire form included demographic items including gender, age, setting, and educational level and questions on AIDS related knowledge covering main topics. The data was analysed and evaluated by chi-square and student t-test. Result: The results of this study showed that the rate of knowledge about HIV/AIDS regarding the knowledge of people about the causative agent the highest knowledge was virus (80.86%) followed by bacteria (8.9%), parasite (3.38%), fungus (2.23%). the rate of knowledge about HIV/AIDS according to being zoonosis in females (32.1%) was higher than males (21.18%). The knowledge of university student (45.13%) was highest followed by high school (28%), secondary school (19.75%), and the primary school (8.68%). The knowledge of people about the prevention and control of the disease, the rate of correct answer (66.8%) was higher than incorrect one (28.9%). Conclusion: There is a gap in the existing knowledge of HIV/AIDS regarding route of transmission, causative agent, and general appearance of the disease.