Nutritional Status, Food Habit and Health-Related Quality of Life among People Living with HIV/AIDS (Plwha) “Attending” Federal Medical Centre, Abeokuta

Abstract

The study assessed the nutritional status, food habits and health related quality of life among people living with HIV/AIDS attending  Federal Medical Centre, Abeokuta. The study was descriptive cross-sectional survey in design involving 168 patients randomly selected  from the hospital. A semi-structured questionnaire was utilised to get the socio-demographic information and food habit of the  respondents. Nutritional status was determined using BMI and was calculated while results were classified using WHO standard. Data  analysis was carried out using Statistical package for social sciences (SPSS v.20.0). Result shows that Meal skipping was common among 38.7% of the respondents and this was attributed to their busy schedule (18.5%). About 48.2% of the respondents had normal nutritional  status, while 25.5%, 19.6% and 6.5% were under-weight, over-weight and obese respectively. Also, 63.3% of the respondents had poor  quality of life in the general quality of life domain, 50% had good quality of life in the Physical and psychological health domain  respectively. Moreso, 54.8% had good quality of life in level of independence domain, while 51.8%, 63.1% and 68.5% had poor quality of  life in social relationship domain, environmental and spiritual domains respectively. Effort should be made to increase social support and  enhance the implementation of supporting policy in order to improve the quality of life of people living with HIV/AIDS.