SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED INFECTION (STI) TREATMENT SERVICE UTILIZATION AMONG SELECTED HIV AT HIGH RISK GROUPS IN LAGOS NIGERIA

Abstract

HIV high risk population including Inject Drug Users (IDUs) and Men who have Sex with Men (MSM) do not appear to access Sexually Transmitted Infection (STI) treatment services as often as would be desirable. This situation is worsened by social discrimination, anti-gay laws and drug abuse related laws recently enacted in many developing countries, including Nigeria. This has led to an increasing prevalence of both STI and among this HIV most at risk population. To describe the burden of STis and identify the key factors associated with STI treatment services uptake among selected HIV high risk groups in Lagos State, Nigeria. Respondent driven sampling (RDS) technique was used to recruit 195 MSM respondents, while a multistage stratified random sampling method was used to recruit 125 IOU respondents in five selected Local Government Areas (LGAs) of Lagos State. Information on socio-demographic characteristics, self reported STI symptoms and access to health care services was collected using a semi-structured questionnaire. Description analysis was done for categorical variables to identify prevalence while chi square tests were used to test for association between variables. A binary logistic regression analysis was also done to identify factors associated with uptake of STI treatment services.The IDUs included 96.8% males and 3.2% Females, with mean age of 46.65 ± 8.182 years, while mean age of the MSM was 24.94 ± 4.7 years old. The proportion of BBPWID and MSM who reported Symptoms of STI was 55.2% and 25.4% respectively, while 68.4% of BBPWID and 49.2% of MSM received treatment for STI in the last six months. Most of the respondents with self reported STI symptoms obtained treatment from unqualified sources including self medication (45.6% of BBPWID and 27.5% of MSM), Patent/Road side Stores (16.0% of BBPWID and 20.6% of MSM), with only a few visits to treatment centers/public hospitals (23.3%-BBPWID, 16.9%-MSM) and others (14.4%-BBPWID, 34.4%). Only 40.4% of the MSM and 36.8% BBPWID who received ST! treatment reported being satisfied with the services/treatment accessed while 32.1% MSM and 40.0% BBPWID believed that the services of Health Facility was friendly. MSM who have lived in a location between 7 to 12 months are 0.253 times more likely to access quality treatment for STI than MSM who lives less than 7 months while BBPWID who are self employed are 0.029 times less likely to access STI treatment more than those that are employed. MSM and BBPWID access ST! treatment care from a wide range of available health facilities and the barriers to accessing treatment of STI by this key population should be taken into consideration while planning for strengthening the HIV prevention services.