Purpose: With 2.1 million Indiansaffected with HIV, India stands to be having the third largest HIV epidemic with 4 out of 10 people infected with this deadly virus. The main cause of this rampant spread of disease is lack of awareness & misconceptions about HIV/AIDS. Many studies have reported that early intervention by providing education in various medical faculty students will help to overcome the negative attitudes/ misconceptions regarding HIV/AIDS. Thus this study was conducted to assess the knowledge and attitude in the students of various faculty of medicine.
Material and methods: A cross sectional study was conducted including all the 2nd year MBBS students, Nursing and Physiotherapy students of JNMC, KAHER, Dr. Prabhakar Kore Hospital and Medical Research Center, Belgaum. A total of 166 MBBS students, 80 Nursing and 50 Physiotherapy students were given the pre-validated, semi structured questionnaire to answer. Person’s chi-square test & Fisher exact test were used to analyze the data using SPSS version 20.
Results: Majority of students of all faculties have a basic knowledge of HIV/AIDS, though the overall percentage of knowledge is comparatively less amongst the physiotherapy students than nursing and medical students.
Conclusion: Although our study demonstrates an overall satisfactory level of awareness about HIV/AIDS transmission and prevention; there is a need for such surveys to be conducted at regular intervals to assess the level of knowledge, awareness and attitude towards the deadly infection HIV/AIDS, so that appropriate educational programs can be planned for , to eliminate the misconceptions if any.
Impact Factor
2022: 6.012
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