Impact Of Health Education On Secondary School Students\' Knowledge Of Hiv/Aids And Their Attitude Towards People Living With Hiv/Aids In Jos, Nigeria

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to determine the students\' knowledge of HIV/AIDS and their attitude towards people living with HIV/AIDS as well as the impact of health education intervention on these.
METHOD: A school-based interventional study using experimental and control design was carried out between May 2004 and January 2005 in Jos. A multi-staged sampling technique was used to select the study subjects in two Local Government Areas (L.G.A.s). One LGA was used as the experimental site while the other was used as the control site. A semi-structured self administered questionnaire was then used to determine the students\' knowledge and attitude to HIV/AIDS prior to the health education intervention. A total of 1246 students were recruited for the study at baseline and 1238 of them completed the study.
RESULT: The male: female ratio was 1.1:1 in the experimental group and 1:1 in the control group. The mean ages of the students were 17.6  2.0 years in the experimental and 17.8  2.2 years in the control groups. There was a statistically significant improvement in the students\' HIV/AIDS knowledge after the intervention in the experimental group (p<0.001) but not in the control group (p=0.60). In addition, there was a statistically significant improvement in the experimental students\' attitude to PLWHA (p=0.001) but not among the control students (p=0.86).
CONCLUSION: Health education was found to significantly improve the students\' knowledge and attitude to HIV/AIDS and PLWHA. It was therefore recommended that health education on HIV/AIDS should form an integral part of the current campaign against HIV/AIDS in secondary schools.


Keywords: HIV/AIDS, Health education, Impact, Students.

Highland Medical Research Journal Vol. 5 (1) 2007 pp. 69-74