HIV risk behaviour among public primary healthcare patients with tuberculosis in South Africa
Abstract
Objective. To identify factors associated with HIV in tuberculosis (TB) patients in a public primary healthcare (PHC) setting in South Africa (SA).Method. Among 4 900 consecutively selected TB patients (54.5% men; women 45.5%) from 42 public PHC clinics in 3 districts in SA, a cross-sectional survey was performed to assess new TB and new TB retreatment patients within one month of anti-TB treatment.
Results. The sample comprised 76.6% new TB patients and 23.4% TB retreatment patients. Of those who had tested for HIV, 59.9% were HIV-positive; 9.6% had never tested for HIV. In multivariate analysis, older age (odds ratio (OR) 5.86; confidence interval (CI) 4.07 - 8.44), female gender (OR 0.47; CI 0.37 - 0.59), residing in an informal settlement (OR 1.55; CI 1.13 - 2.12), being a TB retreatment patient (OR 0.55; CI 0.42 - 0.72), occasions of sexual intercourse with condom use (OR 1.07; CI 1.02 - 1.13) and having a sexual partner receiving antiretroviral treatment (ART) (OR 7.09, CI 4.35 - 11.57) were associated with an HIV-positive status in TB patients.
Conclusion. This study revealed high HIV risk behaviour (e.g. unprotected last sexual intercourse and alcohol and drug use in the context of sexual intercourse) among TB patients in SA. Various factors were associated with HIV risk behaviour. Condom use and substance use risk reduction need to be considered as HIV-prevention measures when planning such strategies for TB patients.
The author(s) retain copyright on work published by AOSIS unless specified otherwise.
Licensing and publishing rights
Author(s) of work published by AOSIS are required to grant AOSIS the unlimited rights to publish the definitive work in any format, language and medium, for any lawful purpose. AOSIS requires journal authors to publish their work in open access under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence.
Read more here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
The authors retain the non-exclusive right to do anything they wish with the published article(s), provided attribution is given to the applicable journal with details of the original publication, as set out in the official citation of the article published in the journal. The retained right specifically includes the right to post the article on the authors’ or their institution’s websites or in institutional repositories.
Previously published work may have been published under a different licence. We advise the community that if they would like to reuse the work to consult the applicable licence at article level.
