Hiv/aids awareness of individuals above fifty years: health education
International Journal of Development Research
Hiv/aids awareness of individuals above fifty years: health education
Received 30th August 2017; Received in revised form 14th September, 2017; Accepted 18th October, 2017; Published online 30th November, 2017
Copyright ©2017, Claudia Regina de Andrade Arrais Rosa et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
With the increase in the number of elderly people infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), there is a clear need to create new strategies and plan effective actions aimed at controlling the epidemic, using health education. This study was performed to develop an educational intervention on HIV/AIDS for a group of elderly users of a basic health unit. The sample comprised people aged over 50 years who were users of the Unified Health System. Interviews were conducted with 14 elderly people aged 52–73 years. The following themes emerged were employed: discovery of prior knowledge about HIV/AIDS, elderly people seeking marriage as a form of prevention, and health education about HIV/AIDS. Only with the awareness and goodwill of all health professionals will we be able to reduce the population of elderly people vulnerable to HIV using knowledge as the main tool and health education as a strategy of application and diffusion.
