AWARENESS OF KNOWLEDGE OF HIV/AIDS IN FEMALES OF REPRODUCTIVE AGE AT TERTIARY CARE HOSPITAL

ABSTRACT
Objective: To determine the frequency of knowledge of HIV / AIDS in females of reproductive age group.
Material and Methods: This cross sectional study was conducted at mother and child health centre(MCHC),Pakistan
institute of medical sciences (PIMS) Islamabad. A total of 485 patients of reproductive age group who came to gynae
OPD for any complaints were asked to answer a preformed questionnaire after fulfilling the inclusion criteria. The
questionnaire was composed of 10 questions to assess knowledge related to HIV/AIDS.
Data analysis procedure: Data was analyzed by SPSS version 17.0. Mean and standard deviation was calculated for
quantitative variables like age and knowledge score. For qualitative variables like occupation, marital status, education,
socioeconomic status frequency and percentage was calculated.
Results: In this study, we included total 485 females with the mean age of 28.4±4.30 years. The minimum age of females
was 20 years and maximum age of females was 38 years. One hundred and ten 110 (22.7%) females had adequate
knowledge about HIV while 375 (77.3%) had no adequate knowledge about HIV / AIDS. Out of 430 married females,
110 (25.6%) had knowledge about HIV but no females in unmarried groups had adequate knowledge about HIV.
Conclusion: It was concluded through results of this study that knowledge about HIV / AIDS is low among local females.
Married females had better level of knowledge for HIV.
Key words: Human immunodeficiency virus, acquired immune deficiency syndrome, knowledge