Determinants of adherence to anti-retroviraltherapy (ART): protocols in public hospitals in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Tefera Tezera Negera
In Ethiopia, Antiretroviral Therapy is given free of charge. Lifelong adherence to ART is
crucial to upgrade the patients’ health condition and to safeguard the growth of mutated
strains of the human immunity deficiency viruses that are ART resistant. A person with
ART resistant strains of HIV can spread these to other people, who need more expensive
ART with more serious side effects. The purpose of the study is to improve the level of
adherence to different ART protocols in three public hospitals of Addis Ababa.The study
population is people living with HIV/AIDS who are 18 years and above, and were enrolled
in ART treatment from outpatient health clinics at three selected in Addis Ababa, public
hospitals. The study began with an explanatory qualitative phase utilizing three focus
group discussions and 44 in-depth interviews with people living with HIV (PLHIV), peer
educators, health care providers, family social supporters and policy makers. The
Qualitative data were analyzed using the ATLAS-the 8 software. Among 385 HIV+
patients, a cross-sectional quantitative research was carried out. Data were collected
through a structured questionnaire on a randomly selected sample of the study
population. Quantitative data were analyzed using SPSS 22 version. Both qualitative and
quantitative data were collected from January to May 2019.Adherence to ART in this
finding using the modified Adult AIDS Clinical Trials Group instrument was 86.9%. The
qualitative finding also included variables for the conceptual framework and instrument
development on-adherence has been substantially associated with depression, alcohol use, and forgetfulness to take medicine, being busy, faith, stigma and discrimination,
side effects of medication and low quality of information from health care professionals .
In order to increase the degree of adherence to ART, strategies were developed on the
basis of the findings. Effective implementation of the proposed strategies depends onthe
help of the Ministry of Health and Regional Health Bureau in terms of funding and the
willingness of health care providers to adhere to the proposed measures. Intervention
research is required to assess the efficacy of strategies proposed.
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