Parents’ Participation In Adolescents’ Home Based Hiv/Aids Prevention Education: A Case Study Of Musoma Municipality, Mara Region, Tanzania

ABSTRACT

Whenever a discussion on AIDS comes up one cannot escape talking about sexuality

issues. Education and communication are currently the only weapons we have against

HIV/AIDS. Communication and information can help to fight HIV/AIDS by changing

young people’s behaviour through protective education schemes. Communication

between parents and their children about sex is often difficult. Although most adults want

youth to know about how to prevent HIV and other sexually transmitted infections

(STIs), they still have difficulties in communicating about sex. The general objective of

this study was to determine factors affecting parents’ participation in adolescents’ home

based HIV/AIDS prevention education, in order to provide necessary information to

policy makers in order to design more relevant and efficient programmes to combat

HIV/AIDS specifically targeting adolescents specifically. The study adopted a cross

sectional design using an interview schedule for 120 parents/guardians from ten streets

(mitaa) of Musoma Municipality. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS)

Version 11.5 was used to analyse data. Descriptive statistics were used for identifying

cultural, demographic and socio-economic factors affecting parents’ participation in

adolescents’ home based HIV/AIDS prevention education. However, prior to this step

index scales were developed and used to gauge participation, religiosity and HIV/AIDS

awareness. F-test was used to test the hypotheses at 5% level of significance. Key

findings indicate that parents’ participation in adolescents’ home based HIV/AIDS

prevention education was affected by cultural factors including norms such as feeling

shame to discuss with adolescents about sex related issues; lack of knowledge about the

technical aspects of HIV/AIDS and sex; as well as adolescents are told issues related to

sex when they undergo rite of passage. Values such as adolescents should not know about

sex, and open communication leads to children’s loss of respect to elders were revealed.

Socio- economic factors such as education level of parents significantly affected their

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participation in adolescents’ home based HIV/AIDS prevention education. Levels of

knowledge about HIV/AIDS were found to be high. Parents’ participation in adolescents’

home based HIV/AIDS prevention education was significantly affected by parents’

religiosity, occupation and level of education, but not affected by type of family, family

size, economic status, and HIV/AIDS awareness. The study recommended that the

government, and the community respectively should develop policies/programmes and

strategies that encourage or involve parents to take part in HIV prevention approaches.