The Survey of Knowledge and Attitude of a Training Unit Soldiers about HIV/AIDS in a Central District of Iran

HIV/AIDS is one of the serious infectious diseases and has increased rapidly. Nowadays, the best way of its control is community education and establishing a rational attitude toward this disease especially in the high-risk groups e.g. youth. This is a descriptive cross-sectional study carried out with the aim of determination and evaluation of knowledge and attitude of soldiers at Yazd Shahid Sadoughi Training Garrison about HIV in the summer of 2004. In this research on 1500 soldiers who had entered the Shahid Sadoughi Training Garrison, 240 soldiers were randomly selected. The instrument for data collection was a self–Administered questionnaire used after determining its validity and reliability, and then knowledge and attitude of the soldiers about HIV were studied by it. Based on the findings, mean age of soldiers was 21.35 3.2 years, and 76.6% had high school and higher education. The most important sources of their information about HIV/AIDS included: lessons at school and college (85.4%), family and friends (75.4%), newspapers and magazines (68.8%) and radio -TV (30.8%). The mean level of knowledge and attitude of soldiers was respectively 27. 29 and 3.32 which was evaluated as moderate. The knowledge and attitude rank of soldiers was significantly related to their education level (P=0.001). In contrast to various studies carried out in other countries, in this study we understood that the role of TV and mass media in informing people was less than other resources in other countries. Although average knowledge of the soldiers toward HIV/AIDS showed relatively good information, there were significant misconceptions, especially about HIV positive people among the soldiers. According to the results, it is suggested that separate educational classes should be held for soldiers with different levels of literacy, and promoting knowledge level of soldiers about HIV/ AIDS must be regarded seriously by using strategies such as education by teachers and mass media.