Knowledge, attitude and practice on HIV/AIDS among rickshaw pullers in Chttagong City

HIV/AIDS is a serious public health and alarming burden disease in Bangladesh. The aim of the present study was to identify HIV related knowledge, attitude and practice of rickshaw pullers are utmost needed to know and preventive measures of HIV/AIDS. This descriptive type of cross sectional study was conducted to assess the level of knowledge, attitude and practice of rickshaw pullers on HIV/AIDS in Chittagong city. Regarding knowledge on HIV/AIDS 97% of the respondents were heard regarding HIV/AIDS. Only 3% of the respondents were found high knowledge, 42% of the respondent’s knowledge were medium and 48% of the respondent’s knowledge were low. On contrary, preventive knowledge was mostly related to avoiding sex with female sex workers (FSWs). 80% said avoiding sexual intercourse with commercial sex workers (CSWs), 40% said not to share needle uses by other person, 27% respondents were mentioned avoiding sexual intercourse with HIV infected person and 20% were mentioned about using condom at every sex. The study revealed that 90% of the respondents think that HIV positive person is a bad man and 83% of the respondents were denied maintaining relationship due to fear of being infected. Out of all the respondents, only 7% were found to use any male contraceptives method. However, this percentage was lower among those who involved in extra marital sex. Only 3% of the respondents were found to use contraceptive during 1st sexual intercourse. The percentage of condom user among those who involved in extramarital sex was 2% only