Nurilign Abebe, Amlsha Kahsay, Getachew Mullu, Daniel Bekele, Abebew Getu, Abrham Ashagrie, Dagnachew Darie and Molalign Zemene
Introduction: Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) is caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) which damages a person’s ability to fight off disease, leaving the body susceptible to secondary and opportunistic infections. Youths are among the risky populations for HIV/AIDS, so equipping them with appropriate level of knowledge and attitude and behavioral change towards HIV/AIDS is one of the important strategies to prevent the HIV/AIDS. So, this assessment was conducted to assess HIV/AIDS related knowledge and attitude among health science students in Debre Markos University (DMU), North West Ethiopia, 2014.
Methods: Cross-sectional study design was conducted among DMU, college of medicine and health science 3rd and 4th year students. A total of 197 students were enrolled in the study. Data was entered using Epi data version 3.1 and it was exported to SPSS version 16 for further analysis. The collected data were analyzed using descriptive analysis, and it was presented with frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation (SD).
Results: More than three fourth (78.5%) of study participants were male. The mean age of study participants were 22.42 with SD and range of 1.77 and 19 to 35 years old. Mean of correct answer for knowledge related questions was 18.8 with SD of 1.99. More than one third (36.2%) of respondents have poor knowledge while 104(63.8%) have good knowledge towards HIV/AIDS. In addition, 84(51.5%) of respondents have favorable attitude while 79(48.5%) of respondents have unfavorable attitude towards treating and working with HIV/AIDS patients.
Conclusion: Almost half of the respondents had unfavorable attitude towards HIV/AIDS, specifically towards HIV/ AIDS patient support and care. Even if majority of respondents have good knowledge towards HIVAIDS, almost half of the respondents had unfavorable attitude towards treating and working with HIV/AIDS patients, which shows that they did not extend their knowledge to the stigma and reservations identified around working with and treating people with HIV/AIDS. This calls the need for health courses to address not only the medical aspects of HIV but also the social components, related with stigma and discrimination against HIV/AIDS patients.
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