Knowledge, Perception And Practice Of Preventive Lifestyle Against HIV/AIDS Among Students Of A Tertiary Educational Institution In South Eastern Nigeria.

Abstract

HIV/AIDS has become a global scourge affecting mainly young people. Sexual behavior change remains the most effective way of preventing further spread. The aim of this study is to assess the knowledge, perception and practice of safe lifestyles towards prevention of HIV infection among students of a tertiary educational institution in Abakaliki, south eastern, Nigeria. A cross sectional descriptive study was carried out, and participants were selected using multistage sampling technique. Data was collected using a pretested, self administered questionnaire and analyzed using SPSS software, version 20. Three hundred and eighty seven participants were recruited for the study, including 199 (51.4%) males and 188 (48.6%) females. Mean age of participants was 23.6 ±2years. All (100%) of the participants were aware of the existence of HIV/AIDS, with the commonest source of information being electronic media (81.1%). Their knowledge of the routes of transmission and modes of prevention of HIV infection was high, though few of them have some misconceptions. Poor practice of safe lifestyles towards prevention of HIV infection as well as low perception of self-vulnerability to the risk of HIV infection was also found. There was poor practice of preventive lifestyles among the participants despite high knowledge of HIV transmission and preventive measures probably due to low perception of self-vulnerability to the risk of HIV infection. Health education should be intensified to impact sufficient comprehensive knowledge to change low perception of selfvulnerability among the students.

Leadership Initiative to Enrich the Hiv/Aids Education for Senior High Schools

“…This means that students have information about the prevention of HIV/AIDS, but it needs strengthening. This finding is somewhat congruent with that of the study by Ngozi et al (2015) which revealed that preventive measures on HIV /AIDS are practiced by the respondents. However, the authors added that their respondents felt threatened in using preventive measures.…”

HIV and Sexually Transmitted Infections knowledge and practices: a survey of female secondary school students in Enugu, South East Nigeria

“…The range of scores was between 4 and 18, with 2(1.1%) having the lowest score of 4, while only 1 student had a maximum score of 18. The median (IQR) score was 13 (12)(13). Similarly, a composite score was calculated to determine the level of appropriate preventive practices in the students with a minimum score of 0 and a maximum of 8.…”

“…A lot of gap still exist between knowledge and sexual practices among different groups of people or populations. [10] Though knowledge of STIs appears to be generally high among many students in Nigeria, [11][12][13] it was recently shown to be poor among secondary school students in Ado Ekiti, South West Nigeria. [14] The gap is as a result of ambiguous information [15] , resulting in discordance between high knowledge and risky sexual behaviours which was not only demonstrated in many studies from all over Nigeria, [11][12][13] but also beyond Nigeria such as among medical students of a Caribbean university and high school students in Lao PDR.…”

“…[10] Though knowledge of STIs appears to be generally high among many students in Nigeria, [11][12][13] it was recently shown to be poor among secondary school students in Ado Ekiti, South West Nigeria. [14] The gap is as a result of ambiguous information [15] , resulting in discordance between high knowledge and risky sexual behaviours which was not only demonstrated in many studies from all over Nigeria, [11][12][13] but also beyond Nigeria such as among medical students of a Caribbean university and high school students in Lao PDR. [16,17] If such a gap could exist among medical students, it becomes important to ask what the situation would be among secondary school students since sexual activity has been shown to commence quite as early as 13 to 15 years in many people.…”