| dc.description.abstract | Background: Sub-Saharan Africa has the world’s highest HIV incidence, with about 71.4% of HIV infection worldwide in 2013. Botswana has the second highest infection rate in the world and the epidemic has left a large number of children and adolescents orphaned. Adolescents living with HIV are an emerging group in the HIV and AIDS pandemic. A number of HIV-infected adolescents continue to increase, and this is largely a reflection of successful treatment of peri-natally infected children, infections during early adolescence and the expansion of access to Anti Retroviral Therapy (ART) worldwide. Experience from the developed world suggests that providing care and treatment for adolescents is challenging and requires looking into not only biomedical aspects, but also psychosocial needs and challenges. Although numerous studies have investigated HIV infected adolescents in developed and developing countries, majority of work in this area is focused on the biomedical aspects and adherence and data on challenges faced by HIV-infected adolescents is limited. Few studies have examined challenges for HIV-infected adolescents in Botswana, but to my knowledge, no study has focused on those in rural areas of Botswana.
Objectives: The objectives of this study will be 1) to identify challenges faced by HIV-infected adolescents in rural areas, 2) to describe the challenges faced by HIV-infected adolescents, 3) to find out how HIV-infected adolescents cope or deal with these challenges.
Methods: The study will utilize a qualitative design guided by Grounded Theory approach to investigate the challenges faced by HIV-infected adolescents in rural areas of Botswana. Grounded theory will assist in inductive construction of a theory about the challenges faced by HIV-infected adolescents in rural areas of Botswana. The goal of the qualitative research is to document and interpret as fully as possible, what is being studied from the people’s point of view. The aim of grounded theory is to generate or discover a theory from data that is systematically obtained. Grounded theory will provide a way to know the challenges faced by HIV-infected adolescents in rural areas of Botswana to knowing the causes of these challenges and how they cope with these challenges.
For this study, the target population will be all HIV-infected adolescents aged 10-19 years in Salajwe, Kaudwane, Sorilatholo and Khudumelapye villages. Permission to do the study will be sought from the University of Botswana, Ministry of Health and said facilities. Informed consent will be obtained from the caregivers of participants below 18 years of age and from all participants 18 years and above. The convenience sampling will be used. The data collection will have two sections which will be a demographic survey and focus group discussion. All discussions will be recorded, transcribed and translated into English. For this study, data will be analysed using constant comparative analysis. In this analysis, data will be used for the development of a general theory of challenges faced by HIV-infected adolescents in rural areas of Botswana. | en_US |
