Document Type
Article
Publication Date
7-2021
Publisher
BMJ Publishing Group
Source Publication
BMJ Open
Source ISSN
2044-6055
Abstract
Objective To examine the factors associated with recent HIV testing and to develop an HIV testing prevalence surface map using spatial interpolation techniques to identify geographical areas with low and high HIV testing rates in Ghana.
Design Secondary analysis of Demographic and Health Survey.
Setting Rural and urban Ghana
Participants The study sample comprised 9380 women and 3854 men of 15–49 years.
Results We found that 13% of women and 6% of men of Ghana had tested for HIV in the past 12 months. For women, being within the age groups of 15–39 years, being currently married, attainment of post-secondary education, having only one sexual partner and dwelling in certain regions with reference to greater Accra (Volta, Eastern, Upper West and Upper East) were associated with a higher likelihood of HIV testing. For men, being older than 19 years, attainment of post-secondary education and dwelling in the Upper East region with reference to the greater Accra region were significantly associated with a higher likelihood of HIV testing. The surface map further revealed intra-regional level differences in HIV testing estimates.
Conclusion Given the results, HIV testing must be expanded with equitable testing resource allocation that target areas within the regions in Ghana with low HIV testing prevalence. Men should be encouraged to be tested for HIV.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Recommended Citation
Nutor, Jerry John; Duah, Henry Ofori; Duodu, Precious Adade; Agbadi, Pascal; Alhassan, Robert Kaba; and Darkwah, Ernest, "Geographical Variations and Factors Associated With Recent HIV Testing Prevalence in Ghana: Spatial Mapping and Complex Survey Analyses of the 2014 Demographic and Health Surveys" (2021). College of Nursing Faculty Research and Publications. 1185.
https://epublications.marquette.edu/nursing_fac/1185
Comments
BMJ Open, Vol. 11 (2021). DOI. © 2021 The Authors. Used with permission.
Henry Duah was affiliated with FOCOS Orthopaedic Hospital, Accra, Ghana at the time of publication.
This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.