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Assessing Condom Use and Views on HIV Counselling and Testing among TVET College Students in Limpopo Province, South Africa

South Africa’s population is predominantly young, presenting a powerful resource for the country. Despite this, adolescents and young people remain at the epicentre of the HIV epidemic, particularly adolescent girls and young women (AGYW). There are limited studies that investigate the views on HIV...

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Autores principales: Teffo, Mimi Eve, Mokgatle, Mathildah Mpata
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10252341/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37297648
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20116044
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author Teffo, Mimi Eve
Mokgatle, Mathildah Mpata
author_facet Teffo, Mimi Eve
Mokgatle, Mathildah Mpata
author_sort Teffo, Mimi Eve
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description South Africa’s population is predominantly young, presenting a powerful resource for the country. Despite this, adolescents and young people remain at the epicentre of the HIV epidemic, particularly adolescent girls and young women (AGYW). There are limited studies that investigate the views on HIV Counselling and Testing (HCT) and condom use among adolescents and young people, and college students in particular, in South Africa. This cross-sectional study assessed condom use among college students and their views and opinions on HCT. Utilising an adapted questionnaire from the Australian Secondary students and the South African Sexual Health survey, the data from 396 students were analysed using univariate and multiple logistic regression performed using Stata IC version 16. The majority of the students (n = 339, 85.8%) had a sexual partner at the time of the study. Our findings reveal a relatively high occurrence of condom use in the last sexual encounter (n = 225, 60%) and high HCT uptake (n = 50, 88.4%). Females were generally more comfortable regarding HIV services compared to their male counterparts. More than half, 54.6% vs. 36.0% were comfortable about testing, 34.0% vs. 48.3% felt very scared about testing for HIV, 3.6% vs. 10.1% reported that they were not ready to take an HIV test, 7.6% vs. 5.6% intended getting tested soon (p = 0.0002). Condom use was significantly associated with the use of a condom during the first sexual encounter (aOR = 4.71, 95% CI: 2.14, 10.37) and knowing their partner’s HIV status (aOR = 2.08, 95% CI: 1.19–3.65). The HCT and condom promotion strategies implemented by Higher Health in TVET colleges is showing success and colleges in other parts of the region could emulate these best practices. Program developers should consider tailor-made combinations of prevention interventions that would appeal to both female and male college students to improve condom use and uptake of HIV testing services.
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spelling pubmed-102523412023-06-10 Assessing Condom Use and Views on HIV Counselling and Testing among TVET College Students in Limpopo Province, South Africa Teffo, Mimi Eve Mokgatle, Mathildah Mpata Int J Environ Res Public Health Article South Africa’s population is predominantly young, presenting a powerful resource for the country. Despite this, adolescents and young people remain at the epicentre of the HIV epidemic, particularly adolescent girls and young women (AGYW). There are limited studies that investigate the views on HIV Counselling and Testing (HCT) and condom use among adolescents and young people, and college students in particular, in South Africa. This cross-sectional study assessed condom use among college students and their views and opinions on HCT. Utilising an adapted questionnaire from the Australian Secondary students and the South African Sexual Health survey, the data from 396 students were analysed using univariate and multiple logistic regression performed using Stata IC version 16. The majority of the students (n = 339, 85.8%) had a sexual partner at the time of the study. Our findings reveal a relatively high occurrence of condom use in the last sexual encounter (n = 225, 60%) and high HCT uptake (n = 50, 88.4%). Females were generally more comfortable regarding HIV services compared to their male counterparts. More than half, 54.6% vs. 36.0% were comfortable about testing, 34.0% vs. 48.3% felt very scared about testing for HIV, 3.6% vs. 10.1% reported that they were not ready to take an HIV test, 7.6% vs. 5.6% intended getting tested soon (p = 0.0002). Condom use was significantly associated with the use of a condom during the first sexual encounter (aOR = 4.71, 95% CI: 2.14, 10.37) and knowing their partner’s HIV status (aOR = 2.08, 95% CI: 1.19–3.65). The HCT and condom promotion strategies implemented by Higher Health in TVET colleges is showing success and colleges in other parts of the region could emulate these best practices. Program developers should consider tailor-made combinations of prevention interventions that would appeal to both female and male college students to improve condom use and uptake of HIV testing services. MDPI 2023-06-03 /pmc/articles/PMC10252341/ /pubmed/37297648 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20116044 Text en © 2023 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Teffo, Mimi Eve
Mokgatle, Mathildah Mpata
Assessing Condom Use and Views on HIV Counselling and Testing among TVET College Students in Limpopo Province, South Africa
title Assessing Condom Use and Views on HIV Counselling and Testing among TVET College Students in Limpopo Province, South Africa
title_full Assessing Condom Use and Views on HIV Counselling and Testing among TVET College Students in Limpopo Province, South Africa
title_fullStr Assessing Condom Use and Views on HIV Counselling and Testing among TVET College Students in Limpopo Province, South Africa
title_full_unstemmed Assessing Condom Use and Views on HIV Counselling and Testing among TVET College Students in Limpopo Province, South Africa
title_short Assessing Condom Use and Views on HIV Counselling and Testing among TVET College Students in Limpopo Province, South Africa
title_sort assessing condom use and views on hiv counselling and testing among tvet college students in limpopo province, south africa
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10252341/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37297648
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20116044
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