Youth seek isolation of HIV infected

Nellore: Though there is a slogan that ‘hate the disease, but not the diseased’, Nellore youngsters are following old school of thought saying the infected need to be banned or quarantined.

Despite the government spending huge funds on creating awareness among people on HIV/AIDs and the support to be extended to the affected people, still youngsters, who study in local colleges expressed their unwillingness to mingle with them asking to isolate such children from the institutions.

Researchers from community medicine department of SRM Medical College, Narayana Medical College and Dr Pinnamaneni Siddhartha Institute of Medical sciences conducted a study in the district last year on behavioural practices of 500 youngsters, who study in these colleges.

Interestingly, about 41 per cent of the students felt that HIV infected children should go to a separate school and 51 per cent felt that HIV infected people should be isolated from the society.

Around 20 lakh are HIV infected in 2014 and 12 lakh people died from AIDS-related causes worldwide. India has the third highest number of estimated people living with HIV in the world. Nellore is having around 20,000 HIV positive cases and they were being provided support from the government and non-governmental organisations for ART and other medications.

The cross-sectional study done among 500 engineering college students. Each student was individually approached obtaining informed consent for answering the questions. Out of 500 participants for the study, 311 were females and 189 were males.

Most of the respondents of around 84.8 per cent had come to know about HIV/AIDS whereas 15.2 per cent failed to hear about it before. About 20 per cent of the students felt that there is no difference between HIV and AIDS and 7 per cent did not have any idea about the difference.

Interestingly, majority respondents were aware about mode of affliction of the virus and their implications. About 54 per cent of the students said that HIV can spread through body fluids such as blood, semen/vaginal fluid and breast milk.

About 58 per cent knew that HIV can spread by heterosexual relations with an infected partner, 13.6 per cent people were of the opinion that HIV can spread by sharing food and 23.2 per cent of the students felt that HIV can spread by hugging an infected person.

About 42 per cent of the participants were aware that usage of condom would help to prevent the spread of HIV and 26 pc of people opined that usage of Oral Contraceptive Pill (OCP) will help preventing the spread of dreaded virus.

Most importantly, regarding attitude toward people living with HIV, about 37 per cent of the students answered that they would not sit next to a HIV infected person on a bus and 59 per cent people responded that they would divorce their spouse if they come to know about infection.

About 37 per cent students answered that they would suspend an infected maid and 41 per cent of the participants expressed that HIV infected children should go to a separate school and 51 per cent felt that HIV infected people should be isolated from the society.

“There is a need to provide required knowledge on spread of the virus to the students from their childhood and also the role of community support. Sessions on health issues, focus group discussions on the issues of HIV can be conducted in colleges on a regular basis for thwarting such misconceptions,” said V Chandra Sekhar, who participated in the study.