Thesis (M.Sc. (Pharmacology)) --University of Limpopo, 2014 / Consult the document

The study was conducted to identify the sources of HIV/AIDS information used by residential university students on the Pietermaritzburg campus of the former University of Natal. HIV/AIDS is one of the scourges that the world is faced with. South Africa, before the 1994 elections, was fighting the obvious enemy, apartheid. The enemy now is the silent killer, HIV/AIDS. The future leaders, the students of this country, need to be challenged to behave in a manner that will bring about a change in their sexual behaviour, so that no students are lost to the AIDS epidemic and neither are the skills that they have acquired. The research was conducted at the then University of Natal (now known as the University of KwaZulu-Natal). The researcher administered a questionnaire to residential students of Pietermaritzburg campus to determine the sources of HIV/AIDS information used by them. There were four residences included in the study, namely Denison, Malherbe Hall, Petrie Hall and William O'Brien Hall. The study argues that it is time for the university sector and its partners to take stock of a situation that might quickly outpace the institutions. AIDS has become an everyday reality in the university system . There is a need for a clearer, more forceful definition of roles and responsibilities amongst all the partners in response to the epidemic. Provision of relevant information in an appropriate format needs to be an integral part of the University's response to HIV/AIDS. The study found that the residential students were generally satisfied with the existing sources of HIV/AIDS information. They did encounter problems in finding information in some of the sources given in the study. The study revealed that some of the sources of HIV/AIDS information were used more than others. The study suggested that the sources that are most frequently used should be utilised by information providers or university information stakeholders to disseminate information on HIV/AIDS among students. This study should help the University of KwaZulu-Natal to improve the information - related aspect of its HIV/AIDS intervention strategies at a time when the HIV/AIDS epidemic is threatening the academic sphere and the whole community at large. / Thesis (M.I.S.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2006.

People living with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) have been stigmatized since the epidemic began. Evidence suggests that stigma and discrimination contribute towards perpetuating the epidemic. South Africa has the largest number of people living with HIV in the world. Reducing stigmatization may therefore be an important factor in reducing new HIV infections. Studies in other countries have shown that people who possess inaccurate knowledge regarding the way HIV is transmitted have a greater tendency to stigmatize. Furthermore it was found that people who stigmatize are more likely to engage in risky sexual behaviour and to perceive themselves to be at low risk of contracting HIV. Wave 2 of the Transition to Adulthood study which took place in 2001 interviewed 4185 young people in KwaZulu-Natal on their sexual behaviour. This present study has linked respondent’s levels of HIV transmission knowledge to their stigmatizing attitudes. It was found that accurate knowledge had a significant impact on stigmatizing attitudes. Those respondents who possessed less knowledge were significantly more likely to stigmatize. Differences between levels of stigmatizing were also evident between race groups. Characteristics important to HIV prevention such as condom use and HIV testing were also linked to knowledge and stigmatizing. Respondents who had less knowledge and thus a greater tendency to stigmatize were more likely to have adverse attitudes towards using condoms. These respondents were therefore more likely to engage in risky sexual behaviour. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2009.

Voluntary Counselling and Testing (VCT) is known as the key component of HIVprevention and treatment programmes in workplace settings. The main objective of this study was to explore factors affecting the uptake of VCT amongst employees in the private sector. This study was also indirectly aimed in examining the effectiveness of HIV-prevention and treatment programmes in workplace settings. The Social cognitive theory (SCT) was adopted as the core theoretical framework in this study. The SCT explains behaviour change as a complex phenomenon and a product of multiple, complex factors embedded on the individual’s characteristic and his/her surrounding environment. This theory recognises the strength of other health promotion theories such as the health belief model (HBM), theory of reasoned action (TRA) in explaining behaviour change, but it mostly helps to provide a more holistic and coherent understanding of the complex factors affecting VCT uptake. This was a qualitative case study. Individual, semi-structured interviews were utilised to collect data from 6 male and 4 female participants, who are employees of a courier company operating around Durban. This company implemented an HIV/AIDS policy about 10 years ago, with an aim to introduce HIV-prevention and treatment initiatives, and to facilitate easy access to these initiatives within the workplace setting. Data was analysed using thematic analysis. Themes were analysed and discussed in relation to the topic of the study. Factors that affect VCT in the workplace were categorised thematically and critically discussed as findings of the study. Despite the convenient and easily accessible VCT and ART initiatives, rapid testing and onsite nature of VCT campaigns, the uptake of VCT appeared to be relatively poor within the compnay. The perceived lack of confidentiality regarding results, fears of stigma and discrimination, as well as organisational factors, were identified as barriers to the success of HIVprevention and treatment initiatives in this company. In light of these findings, the study recommends measures that might help improve service delivery. The study also contributes to the body of knowledge with respect to challenges facing HIV-prevention and treatment initiatives in workplace settings. / Thesis (M.Soc.Sci.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2010.

No abstract available. / Thesis (MMed.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2006.

Research on AIDS and women is recent and focuses almost exclusively on the heterosexual population. Despite research on the sexual behavior of young women which asserts that lesbians are at low risk for exposure to HTV, many lesbians engage in high risk practices and are therefore at risk for infection. In order for AIDS education for this population to be effective, it must be designed spedfically to meet identified needs. [...]

This study identifies differing interests which have impacted how Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) prevention programmes in Vancouver have evolved. Drawing largely upon the writings of Michel Foucault with respect to power, knowledge and sexuality, discursive trends in materials are identified, categorized and compared to consider how pertinent subjugated knowledges have developed. The interplay between knowledge-regimes (the benedicted) and subjugated knowledges (the interdicted) are explicated through textual analyses of the materials collected. The findings suggest that knowledges cultivated within the male homosexual communities of Vancouver ensured the implementation of prevention programmes contextually relevant to their own milieu. These strategies were also integrated into broader prevention initiatives designed for society in-general, once their efficacy was apparent. Implications for community education and public health education are discussed, and areas for future research are identified.

<p>This project suggested tha HIV people in Region A (Nelson Mandela Metropole, formerly Port Elizabeth) health districty of the Eastern Cape, seek HIV testing when they are already in stages three (late disease) and four (AIDS) of HIV infection. Data had been obtained from the AIDS Training Information and Counselling Centre in the Nelson Mandela Metropole in 2000. The consequences of diagnoses onlu in the advanced stages of HIV infection will have a devastating impact on case management. Therefore, this paper yielded important data for South African policy makers to write health and welfare policies that might improve the quality of life of those terminally infected with HIV.</p>

Sexuality is made relevant in the way language is used as a matter of the identity of a group or individuals. Sex, for human beings, is not merely instinctive behaviour. It is meaningful-cultural behaviour and as such is semiotically loaded with meaning. Listening and talking about sex highlights conventions, taken-for-granted assumptions about the way things have to be done. Language as the most powerful representational system shapes our understanding of what we do and how we do them in relation to sex. Our understanding of sexual scripts about the sexuality of a particular group of people is through language as a signifying practice. The study of listening and talking is not merely an investigation of how sex is talked about, but how respondents enact sexuality and sexual identity vis-à-vis its linguistically loaded forms of representations in a variety of discourse genres. Representation and its inherent process of signification draws on lived experiences and the daily talk of people in interaction. A theoretical perspective is presented not as a model to be tested, but as testimony to the rich literature on the nature and function of language as a political arena, semiotically loaded with meanings that are taken for granted. It is concluded that the appropriation of cultural myths is encoded in language and as such language is a legitimate area of inquiry especially in understanding sexual scripts in the context HIV/AIDS. The study engages reported high risk sexual encounters such as multiple and concurrent partnerships, as well as unsafe sex practices which have been identified in literature as fanning the embers of the epidemic. Ideologies influencing developing communication campaigns in light of these discourses become a serious challenge as the conventional basis for such campaigns is in socio-cognitive theories, few of which can be assumed to apply with regard to the discursive representations of sexual practices and the inherent risks. Drawing on a cross-sectional survey of 1400 students on seven campuses, conceptually triangulated via focused-ethnography, listening analysis and discourse analysis, this research examines perceptions, interpretations, attitudes, and practices of sexuality and HIV/AIDS. The research is a multi-method and inter-disciplinary approach located within cultural studies to interrogate the gap between knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and behaviour modification in the light of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. This research discusses these findings and offers a critical appraisal of sexual behaviour in the context of ABC (Abstain, Be faithful, Condomise) as ideologically encoded in cultural and relational myths. I found that students are sexually active with reported multiple and concurrent sexual partnerships. Postgraduate students were less likely to report having had used a condom at their last coital encounter compared with the often younger undergraduate students. Condom use continues to be a norm in the universities surveyed. This is truer for students who reported multiple sexual partnerships. Amongst the dominant scripts that came out in the ethnographic inquiry are: sex as uncontrollable biological drive; females are responsible for safe sex practices; strong social scripts elevate male sexual prowess and show disdain for female affirmative sexualities, risk is discounted using a form of post modern fatalism (resistance to regulation); and physical status, based on appearance of a possible partner, is used to select ‘sexually safe’ partners. I have concluded that a deeper understanding of the cultural and sexual scripts obtained from students is critical for appropriate design and implementation of interventions aimed at stemming the tide of the HIV epidemic. I have also demonstrated that interventions that only emphasise the rational dimensions of human behaviour are more likely to miss their target audience as sex is more than a choice of Cartesian rationality (linear choice). / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2008.

Paul Germond and Sepetla Molapo have defined bophelo as a particular BaSotho conception of health and religion. This scholarship defining bophelo derives several policy principles for public health seeking to appreciate religious entities as assets: 1) should actively engage religious entities and to treat them as potential assets in HIV prevention 2) that the value of religion for health is typically not tangible to western scientific and technical methodologies 3) health and religion are sought at a communal level, at which individuals are united through bonds of trust and a common set of cultural practices, often expressed with reference ancestor reverence. Germond and Molapo argue that conceptions of health and religion in other southern African cultures and nations are closely analogous to bophelo, and sketch the relevance of these conceptions for the effectiveness of the public health response to the HIV epidemic in southern Africa. The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) is the United States initiative to prevent HIV and treat AIDS across the globe. PEPFAR is notable for funding a high proportion of faith-based organizations for HIV prevention relative to other major HIV and AIDS initiatives. This is study of two faith-based organizations, HOPE Worldwide and Youth for Christ. Both received funding from PEPFAR to conduct HIV prevention programs in Durban in 2007. The study assesses the conceptions of religion as an asset for their interventions with specific reference to the principles of Germond and Molapo’s bophelo scholarship. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2011.