Coping strategies among adolescents and young adults living with HIV/AIDS in Accra-Ghana

BACKGROUND

Living with HIV/AIDS is remarkably stressful and has an adverse effect on one's physical and mental health. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the introduction of highly active anti-retroviral therapy has led to an increased number of children with perinatal acquired HIV who are living into adolescence and adulthood. Developing strategies to cope with HIV becomes imperative, especially among these adolescents. The study determined the factors that influence coping strategies among adolescents living with HIV.

METHODS

An analytic cross-sectional design was used. A total of 154 adolescents aged 10-19 years living with HIV were systematically sampled at the Fevers Unit of Korle Bu Teaching Hospital from June to December, 2021. The adolescent version of the KidCope tool was used to assess the choice of coping strategies. Stata 16 was used to determine associations between independent variables and the coping strategies identified. Only variables that were significant at p = 0.1 or less in the crude model were used to run the adjusted regression model. The level of significance was set at p = 0.05 with a 95% confidence interval.

RESULTS

The mean age of participants was 19.2 ± 0.45 years with 51.9% (80/154) of participants being males. A majority, 57.1% of the participants employed positive coping strategies with 87.0% (135/154) using cognitive restructuring strategy. In an adjusted linear regression model, participants coping strategies were significantly associated with their educational level (p = 0.04) and presence of both parents as caregivers (p = 0.02).

CONCLUSION

Participants largely adopted positive coping strategies in managing the disease. Factors that influenced the choice of coping strategies were higher levels of education and the presence of both parents as caregivers. The importance of a good social support structure and pursuing further education needs to be emphasized in counselling adolescents living with HIV as it promotes the choice of positive coping strategies.

Health Challenges and Assets of Forest-Dependent Populations in Cameroon

Indigenous populations often have poorer health outcomes than the general population. Marginalization, colonization, and migration from traditional lands have all affected traditional medicine usage, health access, and indigenous health equity. An in-depth understanding of health for specific populations is essential to develop actionable insights into contributing factors to poor indigenous health. To develop a more complete, nuanced understanding of indigenous health status, we conducted first-person interviews with both the indigenous Baka and neighboring Bantu villagers (the reference population in the region), as well as local clinicians in Southern Cameroon. These interviews elucidated perspectives on the most pressing challenges to health and assets to health for both groups, including access to health services, causes of illness, the uses and values of traditional versus modern medicine, and community resilience during severe health events. Baka interviewees, in particular, reported facing health challenges due to affordability and discrimination in public health centers, health effects due to migration from their traditional lands, and a lack of culturally appropriate public health services.

Barriers to caregiver involvement in a child safety intervention in South Africa

Injuries are a global threat to children’s health and are disproportionately prevalent in Sub-Saharan Africa. Despite the rates of childhood injuries, research into prevention and the community and family conditions required for such interventions have been largely under-researched. This article reviews international work highlighting caregiver involvement in the implementation of interventions in a number of sectors, including the health, education, and safety domains. This work, based largely on experiences in high-income countries, indicates that there are considerable challenges inhibiting caregiver involvement in such interventions. This article explores caregiver understandings of the personal, familial, and contextual barriers to their participation in child safety initiatives. It highlights the obstacles to involvement in a community-centred child safety promotion intervention that was implemented in a low-income setting in the Western Cape. A narrative approach was employed with study data captured in individual interviews and analysed using guidelines for conducting narrative analysis. In total, 11 caregivers were interviewed. Caregiver understandings of the impediments to greater involvement in safety interventions included the multifaceted nature of their personal and social difficulties. These included the prioritisation of work opportunities; conflict and estrangement from partners, family, and the community; and adverse living conditions. In such situations, many reported constrained personal choices and disengagement from many aspects of community relationships. Despite this stance, caregivers recognised the community connectedness, belonging, and responsibility needed to achieve a safer and healthier community.