Utilization of Safety Measures Against the Risk of Occupationally Acquired HIV/AIDS Among Building Construction Workers in Gondar Town, Northwest Ethiopia

Abstract

Background: Construction workers face difficult and dangerous working conditions with the risk of physical injury which likely to expose HIV infection as a distant risk. Such working conditions can give rise to feelings to stress that workers may seek to relieve through alcohol and sex. The construction industries faces additional risks because of the migratory nature of their work that requires continuous movement of work related mobility often significantly increases vulnerability to acquire HIV infection.Objectives: To assess utilization of safety measures against the risk of occupationally acquired HIV/AIDS among building construction workers in Gondar town, Northwest Ethiopia.Methods: Institution based quantitative cross-sectional study was conducted from March 25- April 10, 2014 among building construction workers. A total of 660 workers were selected from the source population by using simple random sampling technique. Data were collected from respondents by face-to-face interview using a pretested and semi-structured questionnaire after taking informed consent, and then collected data was entered into SPSS version 20.0 for further analysis. Bivariate analysis was employed to see relationship between the dependent variable and explanatory variables. Predictors having p –value ≤0.25 in bivariate analysis were included in the multivariate model. Odds ratios and their 95% confidence intervals were computed and p-value of ≤ 0.05 was considered as statistically significant in multivariate model.Results: from the total of 660 respondents enrolled, 650 of them were with a response rate of 98.48% were participated in the study. Utilization of safety measures against the risk of occupationally acquired HIV/ AIDS was 40.2%.Training on HIV/AIDS AIDS [AOR=5.42, 95% CI: (3.69,8.24), male sex [AOR= 1.81, 95% CI: (1.29, 2.94)], Marital status [AOR=0.38, 95% CI:(0.15,0.95)] and Monthly salary [AOR=1.72, 95% CI: (1.04,2.83)] were found to be significantly associated with utilization of safety measures against the risk of  occupationally acquired HIV/AIDS.Conclusion: The findings of this study declared that utilization of safety measures against the risk of occupationally acquired HIV/AIDS among building construction workers was 40.2%; showing that above half of the respondents were not utilized safety measures against the risk of occupationally acquired HIV/AIDS, which demands the attention of all concerned bodies. Besides, several variables including HIV/AIDS Training, Male sex, marital status and Monthly salary were found to be independent predictors of utilization of safety measures against the risk of occupationally acquired HIV/AIDS among building construction worker.

Keywords:-HIV/AIDS, Occupationally Acquired, Safety, Construction, workers