Factors Favoring Non-compliance of Treatment to People Living with HIV/AIDS in General Reference Hospital of Gbadolite, Nord Ubangi, Democratic Republic of the Congo

Abstract

Background: ART is one of the important pillars of the fight against AIDS. It restores immunity and reduces the risk of death. Its success lies in its strict compliance while its non-compliance exposes to the risk of resistance and therapeutic failure. The objective of this study was to determine the factors associated with the non-compliance to ART of PLWHA monitored at the General Reference Hospital of Gbadolite. Methodology: It was an analytical cross-sectional study conducted between December 2017 and January 2018. The compliance was measured from patient reports and by counting the number of tablets remaining from the current month of the survey. Any PLWHA who failed to take their medication at most 2 times during the month preceding the survey or whose number of remaining tablets was greater than the expected number based on the month's consumption was considered non-compliant. In total, 208 participants were selected based on the established selection criteria and several factors which led to the non-compliance of the treatment. Chi-square and logistic regression were used to determine the associations between factors and the non-compliance. All tests were performed at the threshold of ɑ=0.05. Results: In fact, 280 PLWHA had participated in the survey. The mean age was 38.7± 7.2 years while the prevalence was 51.1%. Following gender, female accounted as non-compliant (65.7%) than male The main reasons for the non-compliance to treatment were as follows: the order of frequency, medication breakdown, lack of food, forgetting, side effects, travel and fasting. Factors associated with the non-compliance were loneliness in marital status (p=0.000; OR=18.6, CI (8.926 - 38.574)), revival church religion (p=0.002; OR=9.2; CI (2.245 - 37.449)), low level of knowledge of ART principles (p=0.005; OR=1.4; CI (1.169 - 2.735)) and lack of knowledge of ART duration (p=0.021; OR=1.7 and CI (1.020 - 2.829)). Conclusion: The objective of this study was to determine the factors associated with the non-compliance of ART. The factors found in this work were those that had been found at different levels of association by many authors in previous work, namely marital status, religion, low level of knowledge about ART and lack of knowledge of duration of ART.