Awareness, Risk Perception and Expressed Feelings Towards People Living with HIV/AIDS among Nigerian Dental Patients

Abstract

Objective: HIV/AIDS related issues among dental patients have been relatively understudied. The objective of this study was to assess the awareness, risk perception and expressed feelings towards people living with HIV/AIDS among dental patients

Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted among adult male and female dental patients attending University of Benin Teaching Hospital, Benin City between August, 2016 and October, 2017. The obtained data were subjected to univariate analysis in form of frequencies, percentages and means and bivariate analysis in form of cross-tabulations using IBM SPSS version 20.0. The test for significance was done with Chi-square statistics and statistical significance was set at P<0.05.

Results: Awareness of HIV/AIDS was expressed by 93.4% of the participants. Health workers were the leading source of information among the participants on HIV/AIDS. Nearly half of the participants described HIV infection as serious and deadly. About two-thirds (61.9%) and one-tenth (9.4%) of the participants felt sorry and disgusted towards people living with HIV/AIDS respectively. About two-thirds (65.6%) of the participants expressed zero risk to HIV/AIDS. Younger people, males, singles, lower income earners, less religious participants, previous dental visitors and those that know someone who has or is suspected of having HIV/AIDS reported lower HIV/AIDS perception risk

Conclusion: HIV/AIDS awareness was high with multiple sources of information among the participants. Self-perceived risk toward HIV was low but expressed feeling toward people living with HIV/AIDS was predominantly sympathetic. Strategies that focus on influencing risk-perception are deemed necessary to facilitate zero transmission of the infection.