SA youth in denial about HIV risk

Despite high levels of awareness about HIV/AIDS, the vast majority of South African youth do not think they are personally at risk of contracting the virus.

The gap between awareness and behaviour is borne out by findings that show that 62 percent of youth who tested HIV-positive in the study thought they were at no risk at all or had a small chance of getting HIV.

Audrey Pettifor, author of the study and Programme Director for Adolescent Health at the Reproductive Health Research Unit at Wits University, said that it was natural for most young people to take risks and not to worry about consequences.

“HIV is scary, what teenager wants to sit around thinking about death? It is easier to live in denial and think it’s not going to happen to me,” Pettifor said.

The report states that “in order for young people to take precautions to protect themselves from HIV, they first have to think that they are potentially at risk for becoming infected with HIV.”

Among all youth when asked what their chances were of contracting HIV/AIDS, 36 percent said they were at no risk at all and 35% said they were at “small risk”. Fourteen percent perceived themselves to be at great risk of getting HIV.

Dr David Harrison, loveLife CEO, said that the country’s “culture of death” associated with violent crime, high road accident rates and the cheap cost of life, contributed to this nihilistic attitude. Young people who were surrounded by death felt that taking a risk by having unprotected sex “far outweighed the benefit” of preventing something that might occur in 10 to 15 years time.

The study shows that among sexually active young people, 67 percent continue to think of themselves at being at low risk of HIV infection.

The survey found that while 94% of young people reported that they knew how to avoid HIV, persistent patterns of high risk sexual behaviour among sexually active youth combined with a low sense of personal risk contribute to the finding that by age 23, one in five youths has contracted HIV.

This article is courtesy of Health-e News Service