Exposure to risky sexual behaviour among people living with HIV in Uganda

Abstract

The objective of this study was to assess the factors associated with exposure to risky sexual behavior among women living with HIV in Uganda. Secondary data was sourced from the 2011 Uganda AIDS indicator survey (UAIS) that comprised of 387 individual records who tested HIV positive in Uganda. The independent variables used in analysis were age, sex of the household head, education level attained, religion, marital status, residence, wealth index age at first sex, recent sexual activity, having multiple sexual partners, currently pregnant, knowledge of reduce risk of getting HIV: always use condoms during sex, and respondent can ask partner to use a condom. The Analysis was done using frequency distribution, Chi-square statistics and binary logistic regression. In the results, close to every three in ten respondents (27.8%) had ever used a condom during the last sexual intercourse. The factors that were significantly associated with condom use were: age (OR=0.09, p-value= 0.005), marital status (OR=0.18, p-value=0.039) and wealth index(OR=2.24, p-value=0.029) since p < 0.05. In particular, condom use is less likely among PLWHAs in the age group 25 to 29 years against those less or equal to 24 years, married women compared to the never married women. On the other hand, the rich women were more likely to use a condom during sex with their most recent sexual partner compared to the poor women. The findings indicate the need to (i) educate people on the importance of condom use and this can be done using newspapers, radios and television and also promote HIV knowledge especially among the poor and women aged less than 30 years.