Disclosure of HIV status can be an important step as far as HIV prevention and
subsequent treatment and care among discordant couples are concerned, also for the
prevention of mother to child transmission, family or partner support, and treatment
adherence. The purpose of this study was to determine factors affecting disclosure of
HIV positive status among pregnant women to their sexual partners in a rural district of
Botswana.
A cross sectional quantitative survey was employed. Structured interviews were
conducted with 39 randomly selected HIV-positive respondents at seven sexual and
reproductive health clinics in the district.
A significant association was found between the knowledge of HIV status of the partner
and disclosure to that partner [Χ
2 (1) = 16.89; p < 0.001]. That is, respondents were less
likely to disclose their HIV-status to their partner if they did not know the partner’s HIV
status compared to knowing that partner’s status. Factors such as age, education
status, employment status, income, religion, marital status were not found to be
significantly associated with disclosure. Factors that respondents thought influenced
people to reveal their HIV positive status to a partner were fear of blame (65.0%),
casual relationships (52.0%) and fear of abuse (50.0%).
Based on the overall findings presented, it is concluded that no single factor as
mentioned above could be necessarily said to influence disclosure of HIV status to a
sexual partner, but rather possibly a combination of such factors.
Recommendations based on the findings in this study included the promotion of couples
counselling to reduce the barriers to disclosure and increase the awareness of the
partner’s status; and the establishment of support groups in the community to address
issues around the fear of stigmatization contributing to non-disclosure.