Secondary School Students and HIV/AIDS Awareness

Awareness programmes are essential for the development of secondary school students. Secondary school students need to participate in a series of awareness and educational programmes apart from their fixed curriculum. This study seeks to assess the HIV/AIDs awareness of secondary school students in Kollam district, Kerala. It is a cross-sectional descriptive study using a mixed research method where 600 secondary school students and 48 key informants participated. The tools used are Indian Adolescent Health Questionnaire and semi-structured interview schedule. The data analysis was done through SPSS and Atlas ti. It was found that a fifth of secondary school students never heard of HIV or AIDs. More than half of them were never taught about HIV/AIDs and almost two-thirds never talked about such matters with their parents. Comparatively, more females never heard about HIV/AIDs and never discussed it with their parents. Many secondary students still lack awareness of numerous health issues and pertinent issues like sexuality, sexually transmitted diseases, and prevention are not shared on an open platform.