Prevailing Misconceptions on HIV/AIDS among Rural Population

Abstract

HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus, is the virus that causes AIDS. For many reasons, AIDS is a disease that commonly misunderstood disease and as a result, unduly feared, but the weapon against fear is knowledge. Objective is to assess knowledge and the status of prevailing misconception of HIV/AIDS in the rural population of Venkatachalam PHC area. Community based descriptive cross sectional study among people aged more than 13 years, using cluster samplingtechnique, 1332 samples were selected. A pretested structured questionnaire was administered. It was found that 452(34.02%) of the study population had the misconception that HIV/AIDS can be transmitted by mosquito bites and 157(12.00%) thought that HIV/AIDS can be transmitted by just talking to HIV/AIDS affected person. In the age group of 44-53, 40(31.0%) thought that HIV was transmitted through mosquito bite while 16(12.4%) thought that HIV/AIDS was transmitted by shaking hands, talking and caring for HIV/AIDS affected persons. The prevalence of misconception with regards to modes of transmission was high even among the professionals and skilled laborers. It can be concluded from the study that only 30% of the study population knew that HIV is a virus; 54% of the subjects knew all the 4 modes of transmission where as 22.40% had no knowledge about all the modes of transmission.