Assessment of Nutritional Knowledge of HIV Positive Adult Patients of Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospitals Complex Ile - Ife, Nigeria

Abstract

The study examined the content of nutritional counseling package in the Institute of Human Virology, Nigeria (IHVN) Clinic of Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospitals Complex Ile-Ife, assessed the nutritional knowledge and factors influencing nutritional knowledge of HIV positive adults receiving care at the clinic. The study employed a cross-sectional descriptive design and 156 respondents were purposively selected from IHVN Clinic, based on their HIV status and exposure to nutritional counselling. They were interviewed using pre-tested semi structured questionnaires which elicited information on their demographic characteristics and their nutritional knowledge. Information about the nutrition counselling provided by the clinic was obtained through participatory observation during clinic days. Data analyses were done using SPSS (version 22). Descriptive analysis was carried out and data were presented in percentages/proportions, means and standard deviations, while chi-square and logistic regression analyses were used for inferential statistics at 0.05% level of confidence. The results showed that the content of the nutritional counselling in the clinic was adequate and 9.6% of the respondents had poor nutritional knowledge, 76.9% of the respondents had fair nutritional knowledge while 13.5% had good nutritional knowledge. Age (χ²=17.826, p=0.023); education (χ²=25.80, p=0.001) and income (χ²=16.985, p=0.009) were significantly associated with nutritional knowledge. Income was the only significant determinant and those who earned 20,000–40,000 naira (OR=5.612, 95% CI=1.323-23.808, p=0.019) and 40,000–60,000 naira (OR=0.197, 95% CI=0.045-0.864, p=0.031) naira were more likely to have nutritional knowledge (OR=0.19, 95% CI=0.05-0.82, p=0.062). The odds of patients that has Post-secondary education with Nutritional knowledge was 3.195 times more than the odds of patients with No Formal education. It is concluded that though the content of the nutritional counselling in the clinic was adequate, the nutritional knowledge of most of the patients attending the clinic was fair, about half had poor nutritional status and income was the only significant determinant.