Investigation of discriminatory attitude toward people living with HIV in the family context using socio-economic factors and information sources: A nationwide study in Indonesia

Background

The well-being of people living with HIV (PLHIV) remains a concern. In addition to facing discrimination in their communities, many PLHIV have family members who have a discriminatory attitude. This study analyzes the discriminatory attitude toward PLHIV in the family context using socio-economic factors and information sources in Indonesia.

Methods

A cross-sectional study design was adopted using secondary data from the 2017 Indonesian Demographic Health Survey (IDHS). A total sample of 28,879 respondents was selected using two-stage stratified cluster sampling. The study variables are information sources, sex, age, education, residence, earnings, and familial discriminatory attitude. We used the STATA 16.1 software to analyze Chi-square and binary logistics with a 95% confident interval (CI) with a significance of 5% (p-value < 0.05).

Results

In Indonesia, familial discriminatory attitude has a prevalence of 72.10%. In the survey, the respondents with access to some information about HIV (AOR: 0.794; 95% CI [0.722-0.873]), women (AOR: 0.768; 95% CI [0.718-0.820]), and those living in rural areas (AOR: 0.880; 95% CI [0.834-0.929]) were the least likely to have a familial discriminatory attitude. Meanwhile, the respondents aged 15-24 years (AOR: 1.329; 95% CI [1.118-1.581]) and those with a secondary level of education (AOR: 1.070; 95% CI [1.004-1.142]) were the most likely to have a familial discriminatory attitude.

Conclusion

In the study, we found that, the younger the age and the lower the educational level of the respondent, the more likely they were to have a familial discriminatory attitude. The government may consider these factors when designing policies to tackle familial discrimination faced by PLHIV; in particular, education on HIV and AIDS should be promoted.