A Study on Knowledge and Awareness about Hiv/aids among first Year Medical Students in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh

HIV/AIDS is undoubtedly the deadliest disease entity of recent times; unabated spread and lack of cure has made this disease assume the magnitude of a pandemic. The best approach to control it remains prevention of this infection.

The current study was done to study the awareness and knowledge about HIV/AIDS among the first year medical students. A Cross sectional study was done among 138 first year medical students. The information was collected form them within 2-3 weeks of admission using pre-test semistructured questionnaire. All the students had heard about HIV/AIDS. Only 55.79% of them could tell all the modes of transmission correctly. 26.78% students had the misconceptions regarding the mode of spread of this disease. The commonest misconception was that HIV get transmitted through working in same environment (6.52%) followed by superficial kissing (5.79%) and sharing utensil with patient in 4.35% students. All the preventive measures were known to 77.53 % students.