Socioeconomic, clinical, and behavioral characteristics of adolescents living with HIV in Southwest Nigeria: implication for preparedness for transition to adult care

ABSTRACT

There is a need to generate data that demonstrate preparedness (or a lack of it) of adolescents to crossover to adult care to inform policy and create appropriate models in LMICs. This cross-sectional survey of 252 adolescents (15–19 years) receiving HIV-care assessed sociodemographic characteristics, clinical and ART status, and HIV-related behaviors. Also, the study appraised HIV status awareness, and disclosure, and access to healthcare. The mean age of the participants was 16.41 (SD = 1.41) years, and 128 (50.8%) of them were female. The mean adherence level (by VAS) reported was 73.05 ± 16.75. The most frequently reported reasons for missing medications were forgetting (39.6%), falling asleep (37.7%), being away from home (33.8%), and being too busy with other endeavors (32.6%). Most (93.7%) of the participants paid for health care services out-of-pocket. Many (38.1%) of them did not know how they acquired HIV infection. About half (44.8%) of them had boy/girlfriends, but only 25 (9.9%) reported ever having sex. Only 4% disclosed their HIV status to their boy/girlfriends. Critical gaps exist in adolescents’ preparedness for transition to adult HIV-care, necessitating the need for specific transition preparedness programs within the HIV-care cascade to address the peculiar needs of adolescents at this stage.

Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT03394391.

KEYWORDS:

• Adult care
• adolescents living with HIV
• transition preparedness
• Nigeria

Acknowledgment

The investigators wish to thank the study participants and other volunteers for their time and kind cooperation. We also wish to acknowledge the contributions of the staff at collaborating sites.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Consent for publication

The consent form publication is not applicable for this manuscript.

Authors’ contributions

Conceptualization: OA.

Formal analysis: OA.

Investigation: OA, OJ, KS, FB, MA, AD.

Methodology: OA, OJ, KS, FB, MA, AD.

Project administration: OA, KS.

Supervision: OA, KS.

Writing [original draft]: OA, OJ.

Writing [review, editing, and approval]: OA, OJ, KS, FB, MA, AD.

Data availability statement

The datasets generated and analyzed during the current study will be available upon reasonable request to the authors from the researchgate repository [https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Olumide_Abiodun].

Additional information

Funding

This research was conducted with funding support from Merck, Sharp, and Dohme Corporation [grant number MISP #57473]. The study was investigator-initiated, therefore, the funders were not involved in the design, data collection, data analysis, writing of this manuscript, and in the decision to submit this manuscript for publication.