Use of Condom and Knowledge of Own HIV Status among Undergraduates of Ten Tertiary Schools in Ekiti and Ondo States Southwest, Nigeria

Bearing a burden of 66.7% of all global cases, HIV infection has become a major health challenge in Africa in general and sub-Sahara Africa in particular. For this reason, the battle to halt HIV/AIDS’ spread in Africa, particularly in Nigeria is being fought on different fronts, carefully considering all factors that can help bring down prevalence rate and curb the spread of the disease. Two of such fronts are advocacies for the consistent and right use of a condom, as well as voluntary testing to know own HIV status. In this study, 100 undergraduates each were sampled consecutively from ten tertiary schools in Ekiti and Ondo States of Nigeria, so as to evaluate the level of use of condom and knowledge of own HIV status among this group of youths and young adults. The study was conducted through the use of self-administered questionnaires among the enrolled undergraduates. The 1000 subjects comprised 421(42.1%) males and 57.1 (57.1%) females, while 8 (0.8%) did not disclose their gender. Five hundred and twenty-one (52.1%) of the subjects fell within the 21-30 age-bracket, 407 (40.7%) were 20years and below, 22 (2.2%) were within the 31-40 age-bracket, while 12(1.2%) were 40years and above. Thirty-eight (3.8%) did not disclose their age-bracket. Two hundred and four (20.4%) of the subjects always used condom, 169 (16.9%) used it occasionally, 139 (13.9%) never used during sexual intercourse, 403(40.3%) indicated that the use of condom wasn’t applicable to them (this group was presumed to be sexually inactive/inert), while 85 (8.5%) didn’t volunteer information about their sexual activity. Findings also revealed that majority, 564(56.4%) of the subjects did not know their HIV status, 51(5.1%) were indifferent about their HIV status, 25 (2.5%) did not disclose if they knew their HIV status or not. However, 360 (36%) knew their HIV status. With more than half of the study population not knowing their HIV status, it is therefore suggested that health policy-makers should scale-up advocacy activities to persuade the general populace in Nigeria to go for voluntary testing.