Journal of Community Medicine & Health Education
Open Access

Research Article

Knowledge, Attitude and Perception about HIV/AIDS among the Wives of Migrant Workers of Muzaffarpur District in Bihar

¹Department of Community and Family Medicine, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Patna, India

²Public Health Foundation of India, IIPH-H, Bangalore Campus, SIHFW Premises, Beside Leprosy Hospital, 1st Cross, Magadi Road, Bangalore, India

³Department of Epidemiology, Fielding School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

*Corresponding Author:

Alok Ranjan
Assistant Professor, Department of Community and Family Medicine
All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Phulwarisharif
Patna-801 505, Bihar, India
Tel: +91-9471007028
E-mail: aranjan30@gmail.com

Received Date: July 27, 2015 Accepted Date: August 13, 2015 Published Date: August 17, 2015

Citation: Ranjan A, Babu GR, Detels R (2015) Knowledge, Attitude and Perception about HIV/AIDS among the Wives of Migrant Workers of Muzaffarpur District in Bihar. J Community Med Health Educ 5:361. doi:10.4172/2161-0711.1000361

Copyright: © 2015 Ranjan A, 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: There is limited evidence on the knowledge, attitude and risk perception related to HIV/AIDS among the wives of migrant workers in India.
Method: We conducted this study in 850 wives of migrant workers in age group of 15-45 years were selected randomly from 34 out of 1811 villages using two-stage cluster sampling method. A total of 132 wives of migrant workers who reported prior awareness about HIV/AIDS, were interviewed.
Result: Only 16% wives of migrant workers had ever heard of HIV of whom 72% had correct knowledge such as condoms provide protection from HIV (80%), sharing needle/syringe (91%), single sex-partner (75%) and blood test before transfusion (70%). The overall reliability coefficient (Cronbach’s alpha=0.78) of 18-items related to knowledge regarding transmission and prevention of HIV showed a high level of consistency of response. Nearly 85% of the wives perceived themselves and their husbands at very low level of risk of HIV infection. In addition, only 8 women had used condoms during sex with their husbands.
Conclusion: Intervention strategies in India should target wives of migrant workers, as well as their husbands for increasing HIV knowledge and awareness. Specifically, the wives of migrant workers need to be empowered appropriately perceiving the risk of infection and use of condoms.

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