HIV disclosure and unsafe sex among HIV-infected women in Cameroon: Results from the ANRS-EVAL study

Sandrine Loubiere, Patrick Peretti-Watel, Sylvie Boyer, Jérôme Blanche, Séverin-Cécile Abega and Bruno Spire

Social Science & Medicine, 2009, vol. 69, issue 6, 885-891

Abstract: Encouraging seropositive people to voluntarily disclose their serostatus has been promoted as a key component of HIV prevention. Among other reasons, HIV disclosure to one's main partner is believed to be an incentive for serodiscordant couples to practice safe sex. The present article investigated this issue by conducting a cross-sectional survey of a large sample of HIV-infected women attending HIV care centers in Cameroon (NÂ =Â 1014). Overall, 86.3% of these women had disclosed their serostatus to their main partner. With respect to sexual activity with their main partner during the previous three months, 35.0% had practiced abstinence and 47.4% only safe sex, whereas 17.6% had engaged in unsafe sex at least once. HIV disclosure to one's main partner was related to safe sexual practices in multivariate analysis. Some of the factors associated with disclosure and safe sex were illustrative of the positive roles of improved access to care and women's empowerment. On the contrary, beliefs overestimating the effectiveness of antiretroviral therapies were quite widespread among respondents and predictive of both concealment of HIV status and unsafe sex.

Keywords: HIV; Disclosure; Unsafe; sex; Women; Cameroon; AIDS; care (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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