Correlates of HIV testing among women in Ghana: some evidence from the Demographic and Health Surveys

Abstract

Ghana's strategic framework for controlling HIV/AIDS endorses voluntary HIV testing as an important strategy toward risk reduction and HIV/AIDS prevention. Yet, like other sub-Saharan African countries, utilization of testing services in Ghana is very low. Using the 2003 Ghana Demographic and Health Surveys and applying both complementary and negative log-log models, this study investigates the correlates of HIV testing among women aged 15–49. Two major dependent variables are considered, “ever tested for AIDS” and “wanting to test for AIDS.”

Results show that majority of Ghanaian women have not tested for HIV but say they want to do so. Having tested for HIV is strongly related to respondents' knowledge about someone dead of AIDS and other socio-economic and demographic variables such as education, region of residence, rural–urban residence, religion, and marital status. Majority of Ghanaian women do not know where to get an HIV test, although knowing where to get a test was significantly related to wanting to get the test done.

To increase voluntary testing for HIV among women in Ghana it is recommended that testing services be made more accessible and visible especially to those residing in rural areas who may be economically disadvantaged. Interventions, including routine checking of HIV serostatus among patients seeking healthcare in clinics and home/work-based testing programs, must be encouraged as ways of expanding access among women in Ghana.

Keywords:

• Ghana
• HIV testing
• Demographic and Health Surveys
• correlates
• complementary and negative log-log

Notes

1. Factor analysis was used to create this scale and factor loadings were in the vicinity of 0.9 for a single factor. Indicators used include whether respondents' chances of contracting AIDS could be reduced by using condoms during sexual intercourse, abstaining from sex, having a single sexual partner, avoiding sex with prostitutes, limiting the number of sexual partners, and avoiding partners with many sexual partners. Note that for the cross-classification analyses, knowledge about HIV/AIDS is categorized but left as a continuous variable in the multivariate analyses. Positive values on the scale are considered high knowledge and negative values, low knowledge.