Abstract

Awareness programmes are essential for the development of secondary school students. Secondary school students need to participate in a series of awareness and educational programmes apart from their fixed curriculum. This study seeks to assess the HIV/AIDs awareness of secondary school students in Kollam district, Kerala. It is a cross-sectional descriptive study using a mixed research method where 600 secondary school students and 48 key informants participated. The tools used are Indian Adolescent Health Questionnaire and semi-structured interview schedule. The data analysis was done through SPSS and Atlas ti. It was found that a fifth of secondary school students never heard of HIV or AIDs. More than half of them were never taught about HIV/AIDs and almost two-thirds never talked about such matters with their parents. Comparatively, more females never heard about HIV/AIDs and never discussed it with their parents. Many secondary students still lack awareness of numerous health issues and pertinent issues like sexuality, sexually transmitted diseases, and prevention are not shared on an open platform.

Keywords: Awareness; Secondary; School; Students; HIV/AIDS

References

1. “Adolescent HIV prevention - UNICEF data” (2019).
2. “HIV statistics - global and regional trends - UNICEF data.
3. “Adolescent Health”.
4. Vijayageetha M., et al. “Knowledge and attitude on HIV/AIDS among adolescent school children in urban Mysuru, Karnataka, India: a cross sectional study”. International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health5 (2017): 1224-1228.
5. Biswas R., et al. “A study on awareness of HIV/AIDS among adolescent school girls in an urban area of North Bengal, India”. International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health 2 (2019): 875-878.
6. Lokesh KS., et al. “Knowledge Attitude and Awareness toward People Living with HIV/AIDS among Engineering College Students of Pondicherry, India”. Asian Journal of Medicine and Health3 (2020): 1-5.
7. Yadav S., et al. “Awareness of HIV/AIDS among rural youth in India: A community based cross-sectional study”. Journal of Infection in Developing Countries 5.10 (2011): 711-716.
8. Verma UK., et al. “A Comparative Study of Knowledge and Attitude Regarding HIV/AIDS among Male and Female Adolescents of Urban Slums of Agra”. National Journal of Community Medicine 7.2 (2016): 78-81.
9. Lena A., et al. “HIV/AIDS education for adolescents - An experiment in a rural setting in Udupi Taluk of Karnataka, India”. Australasian Medical Journal10 (2010): 644-649.
10. Nath A., etal. “HIV/AIDS and Indian youth - a review of the literature (1980-2008)”. Sahara Journal 6.1 (2009): 2-8.
11. Gupta P., et al. “Knowledge About HIV/AIDS Among Secondary School Students”. North American Journal of Medical Sciences 5.2 (2013): 119-123.
12. Peltzer K., et al. “Risk and Protective Factors Affecting Sexual Risk Behavior Among School-Aged Adolescents in Fiji, Kiribati, Samoa, and Vanuatu”. Asia Pacific Journal of Public Health5 (2016): 1-12.
13. Muthuraja M., et al. “Assessment of knowledge among adolescents regarding HIV/AIDS in Chennai, Southern India”. International Journal of Contemporary Pediatrics2 (2015): 263-267.
14. Long KNG., et al. “Development and validation of the Indian Adolescent Health Questionnaire”. Journal of Tropical Pediatrics3 (2013): 231-242.
15. Nath A., et al. “A study of awareness about HIV/AIDS among senior secondary school children of Delhi”. Indian Journal of Community Medicine3 (2008): 190.
16. Othman SM. “Knowledge about HIV/AIDS among high school students in Erbil city/Iraq”. Global Journal of Health Science1 (2015): 16-23.
17. Sood S. “Gender Based Study of HIV/AIDS Related Knowledge and Sexual Attitudes in Students from Laddakh”. SAARC Journal of Tuberculosis, Lung Diseases and HIV/AIDS1 (2015): 14-19.
18. Harikrishnan U., et al. “A literature review on health among school going adolescents in India”. Research Journal of Family, Community and Consumer Sciences2 (2019): 13-15.

Citation

Citation: U Harikrishnan and Grace Lalhlupuii Sailo. “Secondary School Students and HIV/AIDS Awareness". Acta Scientific Neurology 5.5 (2022): 30-33.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2022 U Harikrishnan and Grace Lalhlupuii Sailo. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.