Socio-Demographic Profile, Clinical Factors, and Quality of Life of People Living with HIV and AIDS at a Primary HIV Care Clinic in Angeles City
Abstract
Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/ AIDS recorded 36.7 million People living with HIV and AIDS worldwide (PLWHA). Understanding different factors associated with HIV and improvement of quality of life are significant indicators of developing strengthened and strategic program response. The study aimed to describe the socio-demographic profile, clinical factors, and the quality of life (QOL) of PLWHA in a Primary HIV Care Clinic (PHCC) in Angeles City and associate these variables to the patient's overall QoL and Health Related QOL (HRQOL). This correlational study involved 120 PLWHA with ART aged 18 years old and above. The outcome of the study shows that 100% of the respondents are coming from the productive and reproductive years of 15-49 years old, 95% single, 93% coming from the male population, 70% from the working sector (15.83% teachers), and 81.67% coming from the research locale, Angeles City. In terms of clinical factors, 100% of the respondents have a sexual transmission as a mode of exposure,100% with experience STI symptoms, 75.84% are those with below 300 cells/mm3, 39.17% are coming from Stages 3 and 4 (symptomatic phase), and 70.84% passed the more than 6 months of treatment (in the context of treatment adherence). In terms of QOL, respondents rated general QOL better than their Health Related QOL (HRQOL). Respondents had the highest scores in the psychological domain and the lowest scores in their physical domain. Furthermore, there is a statistically significant association between environmental domain scores and occupation (p-value = 0.001), educational attainment and HRQOL scores (p-value = 0.014), and physical domain with WHO clinical stages (p-value = 001). and treatment of duration (p-value = 0.024).
