Abstract:
BACK GROUND: Globally, HIV/AIDS has created enormous challenges to human beings.
Effective HIV/AIDS care requires antiretroviral therapy as a treatment option, where
adherence to ART is crucial to ensure viral suppression, decrease the risk of disease
progression and emergence of drug resistant viral strains. Likewise, it is common in all
groups of treated individuals lack of strict adherence to ART is considered to be one of the
key challenges to AIDS care worldwide.
OBJECTIVES: Is to determine the degree of antiretroviral treatment adherence and its
associated factors among people living with human immune deficiency virus who were on
highly active antiretroviral therapy in Adama hospital.
METHODS: A cross sectional study on 407 people living with human immune deficiency
viruson highly active antiretroviral therapy and follow up in Adama Hospital was carried out
using both quantitative and qualitative method. Using a structured and pre-tested
questionnaire, data on drug adherence and other variables were collected through patient’s
self report, clinical records review and in-depth interview . Data on drug adherence were
collected by using patient self report about the number of doses skipped in past seven days.
The independent predictors of adherence were also assessed using multivariate logistic
regression model; so that the variables that had p<0.25, in the bivariate logistic regression
were selected for inclusion in multivariate logistic regression model. The significance level
was measured using 95% CIs of adjusted and crude odds ratios for which, P <0.05 were
considered significant.
RESULTS: The overall prevalence of highly active antiretroviral therapy adherence was
93.6% in the past one week( seven days) duration from the day before interview. In this
study history of active substance use (AOR= 6.964,CI=1.912-25.366), having emotional
/practical support (AOR=0.251,CI=0.072-0.869), trusting and feeling the health care
providers treating you are capable (AOR=0.295,CI=0.090–0.968) and having access to
reliable pharmacy any time you want (AOR=0.191,CI=0.037-0.985) were significantly
associated with antiretroviral therapy adherence in multivariate analysis
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS: The prevalence of antiretroviral therapy
adherence in this study was higher than most studies done in developed countries and
Ethiopia. To get the intended benefits, selecting a simple and tolerable antiretroviral regimen
that matches the patient's lifestyle, creating supportive environment and availing quality
health service are the most important step toward optimizing adherence.
