Domestic violence and the Human Immunodeficiency Virus infection (HIV) continue to be a serious public health challenge. Domestic violence, including intimate partner violence among women living with HIV, interferes with achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 3 and 5. This study aimed to assess the prevalence and risk factors for domestic violence against women living with HIV/AIDS. A descriptive cross-sectional study design was employed to sample 300 women living with HIV attending HIV clinic at the Teaching Hospital in Southeast Nigeria. Informed consent was obtained, and an interviewer-administered questionnaire adapted from the WHO Multi-Country Study on Women’s Health and Domestic Violence was used for data collection. The respondents' mean age was 37.3±11.4 years. The study showed that 55.3% of the respondents do not know the HIV status of their partners. The overall physical, emotional, and sexual prevalence of domestic violence in this study were 15.3%, 13.3%, 8.7%, and 5.0% respectively. The risk factors that were statistically significant in this study were the respondent's age (P: 0.001; χ2: 15.43; 95% CL: 1.579-50.517), the partner's level of educational (P:0.048; χ2:3.91; 95% CI: 0.890 - 25.444), the number of children (P:0.003; χ2: 7.80; 95% CI: 2.995 - 60.707), and marital status(P:0.03; χ2: 2.830; 95% CI: 1.117 – 28.926). A practical solution that requires a holistic and interdisciplinary approach that will involve the victim, the perpetrator, the community, the policy makers, the government and the non–governmental stakeholders is inevitable.
Chiejine et al. (Mon,) studied this question.