Sexual experiences of adolescents and young adults living with HIV attending a specialized clinic in Accra, Ghana

BACKGROUND: We assessed sexual experiences among adolescent and young adults living with HIV (AYALHIV) attending the adolescent HIV care clinic in Korle Bu Teaching Hospital (KBTH) DESIGN: Cross-sectional study conducted in 2015. SETTING: HIV clinic at KBTH PARTICIPANTS: AYALHIV who attended the adolescent HIV care clinic INTERVENTIONS: AYALHIV were interviewed with a structured questionnaire to obtain data on their socio-demographic characteristics and sexual experiences. The data was analyzed with STATA version 13. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: sexual experiences of adolescents and young people living with HIV RESULTS: Of 101 participants, 60.4% (61/101) were males. The mean age of respondents was (18±3.2) years with an average age at sexual debut (16.2±4.2) years. A third of the respondents (34/101) had had sex before and out of them 76.5% (26/34) were males. Seventeen percent (4/23) had multiple sexual partners and 38.1% (8/21) of sexually active use condom at last sexual intercourse. Eighty-six percent (87/101) of respondents knew their HIV status, 66.7% (58/87) of them were males. There was a significant association (p<0.05) between being male and knowledge of HIV positive status. Knowledge of a respondents' HIV positive status was found to be positively associated with ever using condom. CONCLUSION: Sexual experience prevalence is high among AYALHIV. More males were sexually active, not using condom and had multiple sexual partners. Safer sexual practices such as consistent use of condoms, need to be intensified especially during counselling sessions. This could contribute to the reduction in prevalence of HIV among the adolescents in the country. FUNDING: This work was funded by the authors