Comprehension in Doubt: An Informed Consent towards Treatment among People Living with HIV and AIDS at Mwananyamala Hospital

Abstract

Background: Comprehension is one of the essential elements in truly informed consent. Maximizing comprehension is a major challenge for informed consent processes within an education difference and resource-limited settings. Comprehension with the informed consent process was found to be markedly lower among persons with lower educational levels. Tanzania is one among the underdeveloped countries, challenged by low education and poverty. So these make a doubt on Comprehension of informed consent process of treatment among HIV and AIDS patients. Objective: This study aimed at assessing level of comprehension of informed consent process for treatment among people living with HIV and AIDS. Methodology: This was a cross-sectional study carried out from March to June 2017 at Mwananyamala hospital. Random sampling technique was employed to select 75participants among people living with HIV and AIDS. Data was collected using a questionnaire. Data analysis was done using SPSS version 20+ to analyze dependent and independent variables which included descriptive statistics for frequency and tables. Fishers’ exact test used for showing associations between study variables during statistical analysis. P-value of < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: Out of the 75 patients 50.7% have good comprehension while 38.7% had poor comprehension of treatment preliminary information of informed consent. Of the 75 patients 96% comprehended the purpose(s) of their treatment. More than half (61.3%) of patients did not know the risk while 54.7% did not know voluntariness of their treatment. A significant association between level of education, sources of information and gender with patients’ comprehension was observed (p<0.05). There was no association between patients’ comprehension with age. Conclusion: The study clearly indicated that, level of comprehension of informed consent towards treatment preliminary information among People living with HIV and AIDS is poor, especially for female. Their lack of adequate sources of information towards treatment on informed consent was associated with lower level of formal education. All above factors affect greatly 51.2% of female comprehension of informed consent towards treatment. Therefore, more than half of female consent is not meaningful.