Knowledge and attitudes of Tehran high schools (district 1) about HIV, 2006

HIV/AIDS has been known as the most dangerous disease of the century. Moreover, special attention has been paid to teenagers who are more likely to be engaged in the AIDS complications. The present study aimed to evaluate the awareness and attitude of the students of the high schools at the north (district 1) of Tehran. In this cross –sectional study, a double stage random sampling was used and 640 students (357 girls, 283 boys) were evaluated. They were asked to complete an NCHS questionnaire consisting of 22 questions on awareness, 6 questions on attitude and 2 extra questions for obtaining information on AIDS. SPSS software, Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney tests were used to analyze the data. The level of difficulty of more than half of the questions (13) was higher than 80%. A question from pathogenesis section of the questionnaire was found to be the most difficult one which had been answered correctly by only 24% of the subjects. The easiest question correctly answered by 96.6% belonged to etiology. Difficulty of coefficiency for all the questions of the means of transmission was higher than 80%. In the prevention section, half of the subjects were able to answer 5 questions out of 7, correctly. The least-aware fact was the availability of some drugs which enhance survival time of the patients. Asked to make a self-assessment in attitude section, 59% of the subjects placed themselves at the medium level. The most popular source of awareness was found to be TV and the least were hospitals and clinics. The results furnish an evidence of a satisfactory level of awareness of the subjects. The students had fear of infection, and most of them believed that the dentists are not able to diagnose the disease. With increasing the awareness, the fear and the anxiety of HIV could be reduced.