Knowledge, attitudes and behaviour after 15 years of HIV/AIDS prevention in schools.
BACKGROUND
This paper reports efforts to estimate the results of the prevention policy of HIV/AIDS in young people, 15 years after the first case of AIDS in Greece by investigating the current level of knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, behaviour and practices of high school students towards HIV/AIDS.


METHODS
Questionnaires from 702 students of 13 technical high schools in the Athens area were collected and analysed in 1997.


RESULTS
72% of the questions regarding knowledge were answered accurately. 43.15% of the participants believed that their knowledge about HIV/AIDS was sufficient. They considered AIDS to be a big threat to society (89.65%), and would be embarrassed if they were HIV positive (31.75%), however, they would be compassionate to HIV positive persons. One out of three were worried about already being HIV infected, because of their risky behaviour in the past, especially boys. The major change in their behaviour was the use of a condom (80.9% for boys and 56.7% for girls). 64.8% of the girls did not have sexual relations, while 41.9% of the boys had sexual relations with casual partners.


CONCLUSIONS
After 15 years of prevention activities among young people, students have a satisfactory level of knowledge and have adopted relatively safe behaviour. However, boys, younger students, students with a high sense of religiousness and students with both excellent and low school records need more intense and systematic information through suitable interventions.
Merakou
Koula
K
National School of Public Health, Department of Public and Administrative Health, 196 Alexandras Ave., Athens 115 21, Greece.
Costopoulos
Chris
C
Marcopoulou
Joanna
J
Kourea-Kremastinou
Jeny
J
D000163:Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome / Q000517:prevention & control; D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior; D005260:Female; D006115:Greece / Q000453:epidemiology; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000517:prevention & control* / Q000523:psychology; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012725:Sexual Behavior / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires