Addressing Comprehensive Knowledge as a Strategy to Mitigate HIV Related Risk Behavior among Young Men in India

Vipul Pandey, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)

With sexual activity often initiated in adolescence within or outside of marriage the risk relating to their sexual behaviour is often underestimated. This paper focuses at the extent of AIDS knowledge among young men age 15-24 and the socio-economic and contextual correlates of HIV related risk behaviors in India, which may have top programmatic priorities for designing evidence based interventions. The data has been taken from NFHS-3 and statistical techniques are used for the analysis. Results suggest that only 36 percent of the young men in India have “comprehensive knowledge” about HIV/AIDS- a pre requisite for effectiveness in prevention and control programme in any country. Overall 6 percent of the young men reported to have an “intention to have sex before marriage”. Thus intervention programs should focus at enhancing not only the “comprehensive knowledge” but also “condom promotion” and “safer sexual practices” While designing programmatic response to the epidemic.