Abstract
With the advent of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) HIV-infected children are surviving into adulthood. Despite emerging evidence of the benefits of disclosure, when and how to disclose the diagnosis of HIV to children remain a clinical dilemma. We investigated the prevalence and determinants of HIV disclosure in a cross-sectional study of 71 caregiver-child dyads from the Pediatric HIV/AIDS Care Program at Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital (Accra, Ghana). The children were between 8 and 14 years of age (median age, 10.39 years). The prevalence of disclosure was 21%. In the unadjusted analyses, the age of child, the level of education of child, deceased biologic father, administration of own HIV medications, and longer duration on HIV medication were significantly associated with disclosure. The low prevalence of disclosure underscores the need for a systematic and a staged approach in disclosing HIV status to infected children in resource limited countries.
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Acknowledgments
We are grateful to the Pediatric HIV/AIDS Care Program team at Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, and Mr. Kakra Adjei and Jonas Kusah for their technical support. We thank the children and families for their participation. The Pediatric HIV/AIDS Care Program is supported by funding from the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, the Ministry of Health and the National AIDS Control Program through the Global Fund for AIDS, TB, and Malaria. SK was supported by Down’s International Travel Fellowship and Yale School of Medicine Student Research Fellowship and EP was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (KO8AI074404).
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Stacey Kallem and Lorna Renner contributed equally to this work.
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Kallem, S., Renner, L., Ghebremichael, M. et al. Prevalence and Pattern of Disclosure of HIV Status in HIV-Infected Children in Ghana. AIDS Behav 15, 1121–1127 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10461-010-9741-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10461-010-9741-9