Level of awareness about AIDS: a comparative study of girls of two senior secondary schools of Chandigarh.

Abstract

A study of 110 female adolescents 14-18 years of age attending government senior secondary schools (1 urban and 1 rural) in Chandigarh, India, in 1994 compared awareness of AIDS. 84.48% of urban and 90.39% of rural students agreed that the sex education they received in school was inadequate. AIDS was identified as an infectious disease by 67.24% of urban and 63.36% of rural students. Modes of HIV transmission identified by urban and rural girls, respectively, included: use of unsterilized needles for injection (81.03% and 25.0%), drinking from the same glass as an infected person (6.89% and 17.3%), sex with an infected person (81.03% and 59.62%), and mosquito bites (8.62% and 7.69%). 12.07% of urban students and 55.77% of their rural counterparts believed there is a cure for AIDS. The main sources of information about AIDS for urban and rural students, respectively, were: newspaper articles (56.89% and 21.15%), television (62.07% and 50.00%), magazine articles (34.49% and 9.62%), conversations with friends (25.89% and 11.54%), and discussions with health care professionals (13.79% and 1.92%). 82.76% of urban students and 67.31% of rural students were afraid of contracting HIV/AIDS, while 29.31% and 61.54%, respectively, feared someone in their family might become infected. Finally, 63.79% of urban and 51.92% of rural adolescents were aware that a person can be HIV-infected yet appear healthy. Overall, these findings indicate that, although these secondary school students had acquired information about AIDS from a variety of sources, much of this information was inaccurate. There is a need for school-based sex education programs to deepen students' knowledge of HIV/AIDS.