Evaluation of vct utilization by women in Kenya using the logistic regression model

Abstract

HIV/AIDS pandemic is a global crisis with consequences that will be felt for decades to come. It has already claimed more than 25 million lives and another 40 million people are currently estimated to be living with HIV/AIDS worldwide. Women account for half of the people living with HIV/AIDS worldwide and nearly 60% of HIV infections in Sub-Saharan Africa. VeT has been described as a high-leverage intervention for HIV/AIDS prevention in sub-Saharan Africa because of its demonstrated effectiveness. This is, however, restricted to few areas making it inaccessible to various individuals who may want to be tested. This study sought to establish the trend in uptake of VCT and establish factors associated with the utilization of VCT Data was extracted from KDHS data collected for the years 2003 and 2008. Using SPSS version 15.0 and 17.0, several variables were cross tabulated against the constant variable ever been tested for HIV and Chi square used to detect differences in categorical variables between or among groups. To test if there was a significant difference in the two years, the t value of the proportions was calculated and compared with the t tab. Logistic regression analysis with stepwise elimination was used to determine factors that had statistical significant association with the outcome ever been tested. Factors included in the analysis were age, marital status, wealth index, region, residence, highest education level, religion, currently/formerly/never married, number of unions, husband lives in house, ever been married and number of other wives. The outcome of this study revealed a significant association between VCT utilization and various factors. These included age, marital status, wealth index, residence, region, religion, highest education level and husband lives in house. VCT uptake was greater in 2008 compared to 2003.