Effectiveness of HIV status disclosure to sex partners in promotion of safer sex practice among youth living with HIV in Machinga district, Malawi.
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Date
2020-03-01
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Abstract
Disclosing HIV test results to one's sexual partner allows the couple to make
informed decision regarding preventive behaviours as well as engaging the partner to the access of necessary support for coping with serostatus and illness. It may encourage partners to seek testing or change behaviour, and eventually decrease the transmission of HIV. The present study was done to determine the rate, outcomes such as condom use and factors associated with HIV positive status disclosure in Machinga District.
The aim of this study was to assess the effectiveness of HIV status disclosure to sex partners in promotion of condom use as a safer sex method among young people living with HIV.The study used mixed methods; descriptive cross-sectional and qualitative approaches. Self-administered questionnaires were completed by 238 enrolled participants while 21 participants were involved in an in-depth interview. Simple random sampling and purposeful sampling were used to recruit the study participants in both cross-sectional and qualitative studies respectively. SPSS, Stata version 14, thematic analysis and NVivo 10 were used in data analysis.Of 238 enrolled participants, 121(50.84%) were able to disclose their status to their sexual partners. Bivariate analysis showed that several factors which include; condom use, gender, education were significantly associated with HIV disclosure. Among those who did not disclose, majority stated their reason as fear of negative reaction from their partner and discrimination from the community. Similarly, the seriousness of relationship also mattered to the study participants when it came to disclosure of status.
Low disclosure rate by the study participants may result into inadequate ability to engage in preventive behaviours and to access support. It may also lead to further transmission of HIV as the partner may have other sexual partners. Programmatic and counselling efforts should focus on significance of disclosure of status to sexual partners.