Abstract
BackgroundUntil recently, young people in Kazakhstan have been only moderately affected by the global HIV epidemic. Today, however, the HIV epidemic in Central Asia is one of the most rapidly increasing epidemics in the world. It is mainly concentrated to vulnerable groups such as intravenous drug users, sex workers, the purchasers of sexual services and the financially marginalized. Young, sexually active people may however be the gateway for the epidemic to the general population, and knowledge about their attitudes and behavior is therefore important in planning preventive measures.MethodsTo gather information about young students and their attitudes and knowledge about HIV/AIDS, we collected 600 structured questionnaires and made 23 semi-structured interviews among three groups of students. Response rate was 99%.ResultsAlmost 99% of the respondents had heard of HIV/AIDS, and 89% could identify ways to protect oneself against sexually transmitted HIV/AIDS. The main routes of transmission, sexual contact without condom and intravenous drug use, were both identified by 97% of the students. Twenty-five percent of the female students and 75% of the male students had had one or more sexual partners. More than 30% of the young men had purchased sex, and homosexuality was widely stigmatized.ConclusionRisks for the spread of HIV/AIDS among young people in Kazakhstan include prostitution as well as stigmatization of the HIV positive and of homosexuals. Protective factors are good knowledge about risks and protection, and opportunities to talk and gather information about sexuality and HIV/AIDS.
Highlights
Until recently, young people in Kazakhstan have been only moderately affected by the global HIV epidemic
Information and knowledge Almost all the respondents to the questionnaires, 99%, had heard of HIV/AIDS, but only 54% answered that there is a difference between HIV and AIDS
Most of the men but few of the women we interviewed said that there was a lot of prostitution in the city
Summary
Young people in Kazakhstan have been only moderately affected by the global HIV epidemic. Sexually active people may be the gateway for the epidemic to the general population, and knowledge about their attitudes and behavior is important in planning preventive measures. The Republic of Kazakhstan is a large country with a relatively small population of 15 million people. It was formerly part of the Soviet Union and is a multiethnic society with some 100 different ethnic groups, dominated by Russians and Kazakhs. Semipalatinsk as it is called in Russian, is a city in northeastern Kazakhstan with approximately 293,000 inhabitants, one of the larger industrial cities in the country and long the centre for the Soviet nuclear weapon testing
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