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Abstract
Background:
Acquired Immunodeficiency
Syndrome (AIDS) is a complicated disease that can pass
on from person to person and can damage the human body’s
immune system. Thus, the victim remains susceptible to
various other infections. Since appropriate cure for the
disease is yet to be available so the better way of
avoiding the disease is to eliminate the risk of
developing it. The Northeast India is the eastern most
part of India and consists of eight states viz.
Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram,
Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura. The region is faced with a
critical problem of HIV/AIDS and is spreading like wild
fire (Srinivasan, 2003).
Objectives:
(i)
To measure the
impact of education of both husband and wife and
residential type on the knowledge about the transmission
of HIV in the North Eastern Region (NER).
(ii)
To compare the
knowledge regarding transmission of HIV among the rural
and urban people of the North Eastern Region (NER).
Data
and Methodology: Data has
been taken from the Reproductive and Child Health Survey
-II
(RCH II) conducted by the Government of India in 2005.
Information about five variables like, State, Type of
residence, Husband’s education, Wife’s education and
Awareness of AIDS (which is considered as the dependent
variable) was used. The respondent's awareness about
HIV/AIDS were divided into two categories viz. complete
knowledge (1) and misconception (0), which is decided by
the answers of the respondents to some simple questions
on HIV/AIDS. Since the dependent variable is binary so
binary logistic regression was used to reach the
results.
Results/Findings: The
misconception of the people about HIV/AIDS is more in
the northeast India than those with complete knowledge.
As expected, the awareness level is less amongst the
rural people compared to their urban counterpart.
However, in Manipur where the prevalence of HIV cases is
high, more people have complete knowledge about
HIV/AIDS. The men with education, has more chance of
having complete knowledge about the disease which is
however not the case with women. This is true for both
rural and urban women of the region.
Conclusion:
The finding that for women the difference between the
percentage of people with complete knowledge about
HIV/AIDS amongst those with education and those without
education (both rural and urban female population), is
negligible-
needs proper attention. It means that even education of
women of the North East India does not play a
significant role to do away with the misconception that
they have about HIV/AIDS. Thus, special program are to
be designed to enhance the awareness of women about
HIV/AIDS.
Keywords:
HIV/AIDS, Logistic Regression, Health Awareness |
