Relationship between Antiretroviral Therapy Treatment (ART) knowledge and disclosure of HIV status to support groups among HIV/AIDS Patients in Uganda, Kenya and Zambia

Background: Disclosure of HIV status is an essential part of behavior modification, access and adherence to treatment in people infected with HIV. AIDSRelief, which is designed to enable rapid scale-up of people on antiretroviral therapy (ART), has been working in seven countries in Africa and two countries in the Caribbean and funded through the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). Objective: The objective of this research is to examine the association between knowledge of ART and disclosure of their HIV/AIDS status to support groups. Data and methods: The data are gathered for this study from three ongoing AIDSRelief support countries (Uganda, Kenya and Zambia) after reviewing selected medical charts of patients who had been on ART for over twelve months. The chart review resulted in approximately 892 adult patients on antiretroviral therapy between August 2004 and April 2005. In addition to viral load measurements, The AIDSRelief Adherence Survey was administered on those patients. Results: A “knowledge factor score” is constructed from fifteen ART knowledge indicators of survey. Since our dependent variable is disclosure to support groups (yes/no), several logistic regression models are estimated. Results show persons with high ART knowledge are significantly more likely to disclose their status to support group compared to those who have low ART knowledge after controlling for the effect of other variables in the model. The increase in ART knowledge and access to therapy in these settings has lead to the need to identify effective models that work and lead to thriving treatment outcomes.