Knowledge of STIs and blood‐borne viruses among Vietnamese men in metropolitan Sydney

Abstract

Objective: To describe the sexual health knowledge of a group of Vietnamese men living in inner urban Sydney in order to assist with future program planning. Method: Data were collected through telephone interviews conducted in Vietnamese using a structured questionnaire. Data were obtained from 499 of 761 eligible men contacted, giving a response rate of 66%. The data were weighted to be consistent with the age distribution of Vietnamese males in the area. A comparison was done with a published national telephone study of sexual behaviour and knowledge. Results: Low knowledge levels about sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and blood‐borne viruses were found, compared with data from a published national telephone study. The factors associated with higher mean knowledge scores on multiple regression were: having 10 or more lifetime female sexual partners, being hepatitis B vaccinated, knowing someone with HIV, having received information about HIV in Vietnam in the past 12 months, having received information about HIV or STIs in the past 12 months from a GP. Knowledge about chlamydia was particularly poor. Conclusion: Targeted, community‐wide, awareness‐raising campaigns and health care worker education is required to improve the Vietnamese community's knowledge of STIs, with particular emphasis on improving chlamydia knowledge.

Listening to the consumer voice: developing multilingual cancer information resources for people affected by liver cancer

“…As culturally and linguistically appropriate information materials written in Vietnamese were difficult to source, this could have reinforced Vietnamese people's preference to seek all their health‐related information from their family doctor, whom they trusted beyond all other sources. O'Connor et al . corroborated our finding that the Vietnamese community in Australia relies heavily on Vietnamese family doctors for information about health‐related matters.…”

Low knowledge and high infection rates of hepatitis in Vietnamese men in Sydney

“…24 Of particular concern are the very low levels of hepatitis B knowledge in these Vietnamese men with only 59% answering the question correctly compared with 71% in Seattle, USA, in 2002. 17 The self-reported rate of ever being infected with hepatitis B was 7.8% compared with 0.7% in the ASHR male sample; however, knowledge levels in Vietnamese men were much lower than in the ASHR sample. As anticipated, ever being infected with hepatitis B is very common in the Vietnamese community.…”

“…The methods have been reported previously. 17,18 The study was approved by the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital Research Ethics Committee. To generate the sampling frame, a validated list of the 100 most common Vietnamese family names was obtained.…”

“…16 A recent paper found that Vietnamese men living in Sydney generally display lower levels of sexually transmissible infection (STI) knowledge compared with other Australian males. 17 Another recent study found that sex with sex workers is more common among Vietnamese men, both in Sydney and when they travel outside Australia, and unprotected vaginal sex with sex workers is more frequent than was found in the Australian Study of Health and Relationships (ASHR).…”

Representations and coverage of non-English-speaking immigrants and multicultural issues in three major Australian health care publications

“…Telephone surveys of Vietnamese males' knowledge of sexually transmitted diseases and blood borne viruses found poor knowledge [136]; high levels of Hepatitis B and poor information about Hepatitis B was found in Lao and Cambodian groups [137]; Rice and Naksook [138] examined Thai women's perceptions about caesarean births; Cheek et al [139] surveyed Vietnamese women's attitudes to cervical screening and found reasonably high participation rates and reliance on GPs and family for information; Plunkett and Quine [140] found carers with limited English were reluctant to institutionalise their elderly relatives in nursing homes; and Maneze et al [141] described the pattern of kava use among 73 Tongan men in the Macarthur area of Sydney.…”