Level of Male Involvement in Home Based Care for People Living with HIV and AIDS in Nyando District, Western Kenya

Abstract

Kenya’s HIV prevalence is estimated at 7% (KDHS, 2003) and (28.6%) in Nyando District. With the increasing number of PLWHAs, Home Based Care (HBC) has been implemented to relieve the health facilities. This has resulted to great burden of care to family members especially the women in addition to their daily responsibilities in the home. Previous studies have reported low male involvement and high burden of care of the sick at home on women without quantifying the areas of HBC that men are not involved in. This study was conducted to determine the level of male involvement in the provision of HBC services to PLWHAs in Nyando District of Western Kenya.This was a descriptive and exploratory study which employed quantitative methods. Purposive sampling was used to identify the study respondents who were men heads of households living with PLWHAs.This study established the level of male involvement in all the 4 HBC services outlined in the home based care  policy for Kenya.Counselling and psychological care (60.7%), Nursing care 931.4%), Social support (26.4%) and Clinical care (19.3%).Men are not main caregivers of PLWHAs in their households, majority (85%) provide some form of HBC services. Men provide HBC services for the PLWHAs depending on type of care, gender of PLWHAs and familial relationship. Male involvement is important in reducing the burden of women as main caregivers for the PLWHAs.

Key words; Male-involvement, Home-based-care, HIV/AIDS, People-living-with-HIV-and AIDS