Impact of Knowledge, Attitude, and Beliefs about AIDS on Sexual Behavioral Change Among College Students in Nigeria: The Case of the University of Nigeria Nsukka

Abstract

More than two decades after the HIV/AIDS epidemic took root, Africa continues to record the greatest number of HIV infections and deaths. The United Nations estimates that 34.3 million people in the world have AIDS, more than 50% higher than what the World Health Organization’s Global Program projected in 1991, with 24.5 million of them in Sub-Saharan Africa (United Nations 2000). Of the 2.8 million who died of AIDS in 1999, 2.2 million or 85 % of them were in Africa. In spite of this alarming statistic, the HIV/AIDS epidemic on the African continent is still spreading rapidly. Although the governments in Africa are searching ways of dealing with the HIV/AIDS epidemic, political leaders in many countries have failed to demonstrate the leadership needed to raise AIDS awareness among their people. Heterosexual relationships became one of the major means in the spread of AIDS amidst the decline in its transmission from blood and blood products (Taylor, 1990; Wahdan, 1995). Individual behavioral change, particularly sexual behavioral change, appears to be the most effective means to prevent further AIDS/HIV spread under the current circumstance in Africa.