Health Care : Current Reviews

Abstract

Dietary Diversity and Associated Factors among HIV Positive Adults Attending Antiretroviral Therapy Clinic in Hawassa City Health Institutions, South Ethopia

Frehiwot Atsbeha Woldegiorgis*, Yabsra Melaku, Solomon Shitu and Kalkidan Hassen Abate

Background: Nutritional care is considered a crucial component of comprehensive care for people living with Human Immunodeficiency Virus particularly in resource-limited settings and low quality monotonous diets are the norm. Undiversified diet can have negative consequences on individuals’ health, well-being, and development, mainly by reducing physical, social, cognitive, reproductive, and immunological capacities. Therefore the aim of the study was to assess dietary diversity and associated factors among HIV positive adults attending Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART) clinic in Hawassa city health institutions.

Methods: An Institution based cross sectional study design was conducted from May to June 2020 among 532 Anti Retro Viral Therapy attendants in Hawassa city. Systematic sampling method was employed to get the study participants. A structured pre-tested questionnaire was used to collect the data. The data was entered into Epi data version 3.1 and then was exported to SPSS version 20 for analysis. Bivariate and multivariable analysis was done by using binary logistic regression. Results was statistically significant at p-value ≤ 0.05 at 95% CI.

Results: A total of 532 respondents (with 97.8% response rate) were included in the study. Individual dietary diversity score of HIV positive adult individuals showed that 46.1%( 95% CI: 41.8%, 50.3%) had sub optimal dietary diversity. Marital status, wealth index, age dependency ratio, duration of antiretroviral treatment and CD4 count were the factors associated with dietary diversity.

Conclusion: Sub optimal dietary diversity was found to be a nutritional problem among HIV positive adults. Therefore, appropriate dietary therapy of healthy eating, immunity booster foods and diet diversification and also strength counseling to appropriate dietary management of common side effects of ART for clients on early period of initiation of ART.

Published Date: 2022-03-28; Received Date: 2022-02-24