Knowledge about HIV/AIDS and sexual practices in students of 14 to 17 years from Tacna, Perú 2004

Abstract

Objective: To determine the level of knowledge about HIV/AIDS and the sexual practices in the students from 14 to 17 years of the city of Tacna, Peru. Material and methods: A cross sectional survey was realized between September and November of 2004, a two stage cluster probabilistic sampling was carried out in national and private schools. Were included 399 students that responded to a self-administered survey, the knowledge was classified at inadequate, regular and adequate according to their score obtained. The chi-square ant Mann-Whitney U tests were used. Results: The level of knowledge was regular for the majority of adolescents (46,4%), males had higher scores than females (p<0,05). The initiation of sexual intercourse was to 14,1 years among males and 15,4 among females. One in three (34,7%; IC95: 27,3-42,0) men said having sex as opposed to one in twelve (8,5%; IC95: 4,6-12,4) women (p<0,001); their 30% (IC95%: 19,3-40,7%) said not having used condoms when having sex with no differences according to sex. Information on HIV/AIDS is mainly received flyers (69,4%), television (64,2%) and their teachers (62,2%). Conclusion: The level of knowledge about HIV/AIDS among secondary school students from Tacna is regular, with early beginning of sexual intercourses and low use of condoms, showing risk of becoming infection at an early age.