Estifanos Yalew
Accepted Abstracts: J AIDS Clin Res
T he introduction of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) has sharply decreased morbidity and mortality rates among HIV-infected patients. Due to this, more and more people with HIV live longer and healthier lives and thus an increasing number of sexual transmissions of HIV may stem from those who know they are infected and engage in unprotected sex. Thus, the study aimed to determine the magnitude of unprotected sex and point out its factors among HIV positive clients taking HAART. Hospital based cross sectional study was employed and two hundred thirty clients were selected using a systematic random sampling technique basing their daily visit to ART clinic. Interviewer administered, pre-tested and structured questionnaire was used. Data were entered and cleaned by Epi info, then exported to SPSS version 16.0 for analysis. Only 109 (47.4%) of the respondents were sexually active. Of those, 61(55.8%) of them used condom inconsistently. Twenty one and nine percent of the subjects did not know their sexual partner?s HIV status and had multiple sexual partners respectively. On multivariate analysis, being older in age had 79% lower risk practicing inconsistent condom use [AOR=0.31 [0.12 - 0.84] than its counterpart. And those who did not perceive to be stigmatized [AOR=0.15 [0.05 ? 0.46] and not use substances [AOR=0.14 [0.03 ? 0.68] had also 65% and 86% lower risk of practicing condom inconsistently. A great risk of HIV transmission still exists as almost two third of HAART experienced clients practiced condom inconsistently. Thus, due attention should be given besides promoting condom use with all partners irrespective of their sexual partner?s HIV status and better effort is still needed to reduce perceived stigma
Journal of AIDS & Clinical Research received 5264 citations as per Google Scholar report