HIV Knowledge and Service Delivery Practices Among Community Pharmacy Providers in Lafia, Nasarawa State Author's Information:

Background: Community pharmacists continue to serve as informal entry points for Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) services in Nigeria. They help in the prevention and control of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome. In addition, due to the trust and confidentiality in this category of health care workers, access to continuum of care is easier by members of the communities where the community pharmacists reside in. Objective: To evaluate HIV related knowledge and service delivery practices among community pharmacy providers in Lafia, Nasarawa State. Factors associated with knowledge and practice related to HIV services will also be assessed. Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted among licensed community pharmacists in Lafia using total population sampling (n = 23). Data were collected using structured self-administered questionnaires assessing socio-demographic variables, HIV knowledge, and service delivery practices. Descriptive statistics (frequencies and percentages) and inferential analysis (Fisher’s exact test) were performed using SPSS IBM version 26. Knowledge and practice levels were categorized into “good” and “poor” based on composite scores. Results: The mean age of respondents was 40 + 9.49 years, with a high proportion of sex being male (73.9%) and married (78.3%). Most respondents had good HIV knowledge (95.7%), with high awareness of transmission routes, prevention strategies, and treatment effectiveness. Misconceptions regarding mosquito transmission and cure were absent. However, only 73.9% showed good service delivery practices. While nearly all respondents reported providing services to HIV clients (100%), referral practices (95.7%), and maintaining confidentiality (95.7%), few respondents reported routine counselling (60.9%) and Antiretroviral Therapy (ART) dispensing (43.5%). No statistically significant associations were found between knowledge and factors such as training, years of practice, qualification, or access to guidelines of HIV (p > 0.05). Conclusion: While community pharmacy providers in Lafia showed high levels of HIV knowledge, gaps still exist in translating HIV knowledge into optimal service delivery practices, particularly in the area of routine counseling and ART dispensing. This differences highlights the influence of structural and system-level barriers which are beyond individual competence alone. Strengthening the formal integration of community pharmacies into HIV care frameworks, alongside targeted training and supportive supervision, may enhance their contribution to a decentralized system of HIV service delivery.