Abstract:
Globally, the spread of HIV/AIDS epidemic has turned out to be a major health challenge due to its vast
undesirable effects. In 2018, Kenya joint the third largest HIV epidemic in the world alongside Mozambique and Uganda with
1.6 million people living with HIV. Even though individuals of all ages are susceptible to HIV infection, youths remain the
most exposed to HIV transmission due to their lifestyle sexual behavior. The youth population imparts 51% of the grown up
population among the HIV infections in 2015. Given these scenario, this study sought to ascertain the association between
condom usage and gender on comprehensive HIV knowledge among the youths in Kenya. Secondary data for this study was
drawn from KDHS 2014. Data cleaning and analysis was carried out using SPSS version 21. Descriptive statistics and multiple
logistic regression were used during analysis. Results indicate that widespread knowledge about HIV among the youths was
55.5%. Significant association was revealed between gender and comprehensive HIV knowledge among the youths (P=0.016).
In addition, findings showed that 53.9% of females and 61.5% of males had comprehensive knowledge about HIV. Moreover,
condom usage and comprehensive HIV knowledge were significant (P- value<0.05). Further, it was found that majority of the
youths were aware of HIV prevention by use of condoms (79.8% of youths against 20.2% who do not always use condoms).
Impressively, multiple logistic regression analysis, showed that condom usage have no effects on relationship with
comprehensive HIV knowledge with p-values (P>0.05). Gender was found to have significant relationship with comprehensive
HIV knowledge (P>0.05). Findings of this research is of important in understanding the comprehensive HIV knowledge on the
use of preventive methods and awareness on the mode of HIV transmission among male and female youths. The government
health sector can utilize this findings in focusing on sexual education among the youths.
