| dc.description.abstract | This research study aims at examining the influence of knowledge about HIV/AIDS testing among teenagers in western Uganda. Hence the study analyzed knowledge about HIV/AIDS testing among teenagers in the western Uganda using data from Uganda Demographic and Health surveys (UBOS & ICF INC, 2012).
The research analyzed the influence of the different independent factors among teenager’s knowledge about HIV/AIDS testing (15-19) years within the western region. These factors included; descriptive analysis for the characteristics of women to determine the effect of background characteristics and knowledge about HIV/AIDS testing.
The majority of women that were interviewed were from the rural with 85.9 percent. Most of the respondents had gone through primary and had their percentage as (63.1%). Majority of them were Catholics (38.9%), belonged to rich households (27.1%). The majority of women that were interviewed were never in union at 78.9 percent. Among teenagers that were interviewed in western Uganda 54.4 percent were working. Majority of them had never had sex (49%), used condom during last sexual intercourse (60.8%) knew a place to get an HIV test (89.1%) and 52.8 percent had ever been tested for HIV.
At the second level analysis, chi square tests were used to establish the relationship between dependent and independent variables, a highly significant relationship was found to exist between knowledge about HIV/AIDS testing among teenagers and independent variables like education status (p=0.000), wealth index (0.007) and ever been tested for HIV (0.000) only were significant with p-value <0.005 those that were not significant included: residence (p=0.424), religion (p=0.516), occupation (p=0.283) and last time had sex (p=0.408) all these greater than 0.05.
The recommendations made were as follows; there is need for sensitizing youth both in and out of school of HIV/AIDS in western Uganda. However, policies and strategies should be developed to decrease the disease burden and mortality in youth in order to preserve their human capital. Moreover, preventing infection is much less costly than treatment for every life year gained with anti-retroviral therapy, 28 life years could have been gained through prevention. Finally, since many young people are parents they are preserving their health benefits and their children. | en_US |
