Health Seeking Behaviour of Persons Living With HIV: A Case Study at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, Accra - Ghana

Abstract

HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, has posed one of the worst global health and developmental challenges the world has ever witnessed: with its devastating impact on humans, the need to adopt a more proactive and pragmatic step to ensure zero new infections and reduce the incidence of HIV-related deaths is paramount. This study set out to explore and describe the health seeking behaviour of persons living with HIV and attendant impact of stigma on health seeking behaviour. Open and closed ended structured questionnaires were used as data collection instruments to explore and describe the health seeking behaviours of PLHIV’s who attend clinic at the fevers unit of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital (KBTH). Participants were selected through systematic random sampling. Descriptive, bivariate and multivariate analysis was employed. The logistic regression analysis indicated a significant association between treatment adherence and the respondents who took all their medications a day before the study, and were 9.2 times more likely to adhere to treatment compared to those who did not take their medication (p<.001 95CI 4.39-19.27) The scare HIV brings to individuals, families and communities and the corresponding remedial behaviour is not the same. The causative and remedial knowledge gap of HIV in various communities, including the scientific community has changed progressively. Consequently, perceptions and attitudes have seen remarkable change resulting in positive health seeking behavior of persons living with HIV at the fevers unit of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, Accra-Ghana.