Abstract:

This descriptive survey study, which was carried out in Ose local government area of Ondo State, investigated the knowledge, attitude and practices of road transport workers towards the prevention of HIV/AIDS in Ose, Ondo state, Nigeria. A structured questionnaire was used as instrument. Summated scores was used to access respondents’ knowledge about HIV/AIDS, attitude towards HIV/AIDS prevention, practices towards HIV/AIDS prevention and knowledge about HIV/AIDS protective measures. Data analysis was done with SPSS version 17. Descriptive statistics of frequencies, tables, pie and bar charts were used to present the results. Chi square was used to determine the significant association between various socio-demographic characteristics and knowledge of HIV/AIDS, practice towards prevention of HIV/AIDS and knowledge of HIV/AIDS protective measures among commercial drivers.

The results of the 150 participants study revealed that many of the commercial drivers are above 30 years old (52.4%). A considerable percentage of respondents have girlfriends (27.9%), engage in extramarital sex (54.1%), and visit sex workers more than twice per week (21.4%).This study equally revealed that considerable high percentage (40%) of the respondents have poor knowledge about HIV/AIDS, while the level of education, ethnic group and number of visits to sex workers have statistically significant association with their knowledge about HIV/AIDS. It was also revealed that 100% of commercial drivers have varying degrees of poor attitude towards HIV/AIDS prevention, coupled with 93% of varying degrees of poor practice of HIV/AIDS prevention and 77% of their varying degrees of poor knowledge of HIV/AIDS protective measures. Marital status, levels of education, ethnic group and extramarital sex were found to be significantly associated with the practice of commercial drivers towards HIV/AIDS prevention. Finally, this study also discovered that level of education and occasional extramarital sex has statistically significant association with the knowledge of commercial drivers about HIV/AIDS protective measures in Ose metropolis. Helpful recommendations on how to improve the situation were made and suggestions for further research were also given.

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