Abstract
Abstract : The World Health Organisation recognises adolescents as a key population vulnerable from acquiring HIV/AIDS, and adolescence is a critical stage of child growth and development. The adolescence period is often shaped by swift physical and cognitive changes as well as involving risk behaviour that impacts the adolescents’ health. The HIV prevalence data on South Africa shows that the percentage of HIV-infected children significantly increases between childhood to adolescence. South Africa has the largest antiretroviral therapy programme in the world; there is progress on initiating HIV-infected children onto treatment and they are surviving into adolescence. However, although there are existing local and World Health Organisation HIV status disclosure guidelines on children, informing the young adolescents’ HIV status (disclosure) during the childhood-to-adolescence transition remains a challenge. Caregivers and healthcare workers often find HIV status disclosure on the children compromising, especially on young adolescents enrolled on ART. This study aims to determine the prevalence of HIV status disclosure, among a cohort of young adolescents enrolled on antiretroviral therapy at the thirteen public healthcare facilities, in the City of Johannesburg Region A sub-district. The retrospective study design was used to analyse the antiretroviral therapy monitoring data on the cohort of 281 HIV-infected young adolescents aged between 10 to 14 years. The number of young adolescents on antiretroviral therapy in Region A and per healthcare facility was drawn from the Johannesburg District Health Information System; HIV status disclosure was extracted from the patient files kept at the healthcare facilities; and the antiretroviral therapy records, clinic adherence history and demographic characteristics were accessed on the Tier.net system. Using the IBM Statistical Package for Social Sciences software Version 25, data was analysed using frequency tables, summary statistics, and Pearson`s Chi-square tests. Like other studies on low, middle and high-income countries, this study found that out of a sample of 281 young adolescents enrolled on antiretroviral therapy, a relatively low percentage (26.3%) are fully disclosed of their HIV status, while a significant majority (73.7%) are only partially disclosed. South Africa is ranked as an upper-middle income country. This study further found that there is a very weak correlation between the HIV...
M.A. (Public Health)