Assessment of the awareness of male and female singles on the association between HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis

Abstract

Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease which was declared a .global health emergency. by theWorld Health Organisation. The Federal Ministry of Health in Nigeria also declared TB a national emergency and inaugurated the National TB-HIV Working Group in 2006. Every year, 8-10 million people contact the disease and 2 million die from it.Although there are effective antimicrobial agents for the control and cure of TB, there remains an increase which is due to negligence, ignorance, improper
application of available control measures and inadequate treatment. Nigeria has the fourth highest cases of TB in the world and at least 105,000 people die of TB in Nigeria annually. Many people are still ignorant about how TB is spread, its co-infection with HIV, and how TB is prevented or cured. All these are of public health importance, which contributes to the continuous spread and the stigma of the disease. The main objective of this study is to determine the level of awareness of male and female singles, about the association between tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS.Aquestionnaire was prepared for data collection and was
standardised, using test-retest reliability method. The investigation is being conducted in some universities and this is the result from, Babcock University (BU), one of the institutions. Two hundred questionnaires were administered to male and female singles, volunteer students. The results showed that 98% of the students were aware of HIV/AIDS, while 64% had
heard of TB. The awareness of BU students on TB and its co-infection with HIV/AIDS was poor (31%). Also, 88.5% of the students were not aware of BCG vaccine, which is used for preventing Tuberculosis. Only 39.5% were aware that TB is contagious. The study revealed the need for awareness campaign, on TB and its co-infection with HIV/AIDS. Though the awareness of HIV/AIDS among Babcock University students was high, more efforts needs to be put into creating more awareness on TB, to ensure that individuals take precautions to avoid the spread of both HIV and TB. This will help in the control of HIV/AIDS and TB, within the community. 

Keywords: tuberculosis, infectious disease, global health emergency, contagious, public health importance.