Journal of Community Medicine & Health Education
Open Access

Research Article

Knowledge and Awareness of AIDS among University of Kassala Students, Sudan

Fatima A khalid^1*, Abdalla A Mohammed² and Ehab A Farah³

¹Assistant Professor of Biochemistry, Director of Tuberculosis Research Center, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Kassala, Sudan

²Assistant professor in Biostatistics, Tropical Medicine Research Institute, Ministry of Sciences and Technology, Sudan

³Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Dean of the postgraduate studies and scientific research, University of Kassala, Sudan

*Corresponding Author:

Fatima Abbas Khalid
Assistant Professor
TB Research Center
Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences University of Kassala
P.O. Box 266, Kassala, Sudan
Tel: +249912692925
Fax: +249411823501
E-mail: fatma_arb_a@yahoo.com

Received date: January 27, 2013; Accepted date: March 20, 2013; Published date: March 22, 2013

Citation:  Khalid FA, Mohammed AA, Farah EA (2013) Knowledge and Awareness of AIDS among University of Kassala Students, Sudan. J Community Med Health Educ 3:201. doi: 10.4172/2161-0711.1000201

Copyright: ©  2013 Khalid FA, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Background: HIV/AIDS is the global health problem. Sudan is most severely affected country in North Africa and Middle East. 500,000 individuals from different sectors of the community, including students, were estimated to be lived with HIV/ AIDS. Aim: To investigate the knowledge and awareness of HIV/AIDS among the students of University of Kassala. Method: Descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted among the students of the University of Kassala, Kassala State, Sudan. The study was held from April through July 2011. Data was collected through self administered questionnaire and analyzed by using SPSS version (16.0). Results: The students were knowledgeable about the infectious nature of the disease (78.7%) and the causative agent (91.7%). Moreover, they were aware of route of transmission through sexual intercourse (88.4%), transfusion of contaminated blood (71.9%), usage of contaminated needle (73.7%) and vertically from mother to child (64.1%). Less than half of the students knew the symptoms of HIV/AIDS and only 20% of them knew the fact that, AIDS had no vaccine. More than half of the students were aware of prevention of HIV/AIDS by health education and not sharing the instruments with infected persons. Conclusion: The students had a satisfactory knowledge on the communicability of the disease, the  ausative agents, and they were aware of route of transmission but misconception of the symptoms and preventive measure. The source of information for all students is the mass media which is not satisfactory enough, so intensive health education programs are required and included in the curriculum of faculties.

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