Modeling the effects of relationship between gender and condom usage on comprehensive HIV knowledge among the youths in Kenya

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.