International Journal of Nursing Education and Research

Victorine M. Ngachangong ¹, Tabe E. Orock ¹, Emmanuel N. Tufon ¹

Affiliations
1 Department of Nursing, Bamenda University of Science and Technology, Mile Three Nkwen Bamenda, CM

Abstract

Family planning in the past year was thought to be a woman's prerogative, consequently most studies on family planning focused on women as the subject of interest. However, men's participation in crucial to the success of family planning programs and women's empowerment. Hence, this study assessed the awareness and attitude of married men towards family planning. This employed a community based cross - sectional descriptive design using a structured household questionnaire to collect data from 99 male study participants. Data was analyzed using IBM SPSS version20.0 and results obtained showed that most of the men were within the age range of 18 - 35 years (46.5%) who were employed (69.7%) and had 1 - 5 children (46.5%). Most of the married men were aware of family planning (85.9%) with the main source of information being wives (35.3%). Also most of the men had used a family planning method (63.6%) with majority of them using condoms (63.0%). Most men had an overall positive attitude (50.0%) towards family planning with 40% being neutral and 10% with a negative attitude. In conclusion, the level of awareness of family planning amongst married men living within the Nkwen health area was high (85.9%), 63.6% had used a family planning method and 50% had a positive attitude towards family planning.

Keywords

Awareness, Utilization, Attitude, Married Men, Family Planning, Nkwen, Bamenda.

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Emmanuel N. Tufon ¹, Awah D. Bih ¹, Mbi Alice ¹

Affiliations
1 Department of Nursing, Bamenda University of Science and Technology, Mile Three Nkwen, Bamenda, CM

Abstract

The hallmark of HIV infection is immunosuppression which predisposes patients to opportunistic infections. These opportunistic infections are responsible for morbidity and mortality amongst people living with HIV/AIDS. This study therefore evaluated the occurrence and risk factors for opportunistic infections in HIV patients attending the Bamenda Regional hospital, Cameroon. A descriptive cross - sectional hospital based study involving 160 HIV infected patients was used. Data on socio - demographic, clinical and laboratory findings were obtained through history taking. The mean age of the participants was 41.5 ± 11 years with majority in the range of 33 - 50 years (80.0%) and were mostly females (66.9%). Out of the 160 participants 83 (51.9%) had opportunistic infections. The leading conditions were infective diarrhea greater than one month (32.2%), oral candidiasis (16.5%), tuberculosis (16.5%) and herpes zoster virus (14.9%). The risk factors for opportunistic infections identified in this study were belonging to World Health Organization clinical stage III - IV (68.8%), living in a household greater than 5 persons (46.9%), CD₄ cell count less than 200 cells/μl (36.2%) and non - adherence to antiretroviral therapy (61.3%). In conclusion, the occurrence of opportunistic infections was 51.9% with protozoal infection being the most frequent type seen as infective diarrhea greater than one month. Thus there is a need for early detection and treatment of these opportunistic infections to improve the quality of life of the patients as well as the need for health education on the importance of personal and food hygiene on the prevention of common opportunistic infections.

Keywords

HIV, Opportunistic Infections, Risk Factors, Bamenda, Cameroon.

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