Abstract

Information is vital to enable people have accurate understanding of the modes of transmission and prevention strategies of HIV/AIDS, and in this regard, teachers are expected to play a major role in the provision of information to promote awareness leading to behavioral change among students. The teachers’ knowledge and perception about the disease will influence how they are able to perform this role. It is against this background that we sought to assess the knowledge and opinions of 514 secon dary school teachers in Ogun State, Nigeria about HIV/AIDS using the survey questionnaire method. The overall mean knowledge scores on facts and modes of transmissions of HIV/AIDS for all the respondents were 5.7 out of 7 and 13.9 out of 17, respectively. Misunderstandings particularly on the likelihood of HIV transmission during oral sex, from donated blood, from mother to child during pregnancy and during breast-feeding were frequent among the teachers. The respondents who expressed favourable attitudes ranged from 22.2 to 50.8% for the various expressions which expressed positive and negative perception about people living with HIV/AIDS. Television (81.3%), radio ((72.2%), newspapers (64.0%) and friends (56.6%) were the major sources of information on HIV/AIDS, while least utilized sources were the library (11.3%), telephone hotlines (9.7%) and internet (8.2%). Only 16.5% of the teachers mentioned ever discussing HIV issues with students. The problems identified as obstacles to teaching of HIV/AIDS to students included lack of adequate knowledge, the fear that it might promote promiscuity among students and lack of special training on the subject. We recommend regular training workshops for the teachers to increase and update their knowledge of HIV/AIDS so that they could have the confidence of passing HIV/AIDS knowledge to students. The paper also recommends the involvement of libraries in activities that will promote easy access and retrieval of HIV/AIDS information materials.

Key words: HIV/AIDS, knowledge, attitudes; information sources, secondary school teachers.