A Study of Alcohol Use and High Risk Sexual Behaviour in Persons Attending Voluntary Counselling and Testing Centre for HIV Test

BACKGROUND In India an estimated 0.3 % of adults aged 15-19 years are infected with HIV. While alcohol use is strongly associated with HIV infection in India, a few population based studies have characterized the association of alcohol use with specific high risk sexual behavior. OBJECTIVE to prospectively study the association between alcohol use and high risk sexual behavior. METHODOLOGY This is a prospective single blind comparative study. Study population consists of subjects attending voluntary counseling and testing centre which is under the control of department of microbiology. Convenient sample was taken up for the study, collected over a period of 6 months. Sociodemographic profile of the study subjects was collected initially and the following instruments were used in the collection of data.1) AUDIT (alcohol use disorder identification test).2) SAKAPiDU (South Asia Knowledge, Attitude and Practice in Drug Users base assessment instrument. Analysis of the data was done using SPSS version 16. RESULTSmajority of the study population were males (78.8 %) and almost 90 % of them are in the sexually active age group of 15-45 years. Nearly 78 % of the study subjects consumed alcohol either with or without other substance use. Around 58 % of the study subjects were having an AUDIT score of more than 8. About 42.7 % of study subjects had taken alcohol before sex and they also that their partners consumed alcohol before having sex with them. Only 10 % of study subjects used condom when they were under influence of alcohol before sex. Subjects who consume alcohol were having multiple sex partners. As the audit score increases, the frequency of subjects having multiple sex partners was also increased. CONCLUSION This study throws light on including drug abuse / intoxications, as one of the major risk factors for the individuals to practice unsafe sex methods.