Knowledge, attitudes, belief and practice related to HIV/AIDS among young people in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

The HIV infection rate has shown a rapid increase among the young people in Vietnam. In order to inform an HIV education prevention program, we have conducted a knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and practices (KABP) survey among 902 young vietnamese people in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) in 1999. Results show that overall knowledge about HIV, sexually transmitted diseases and safe sex is good. A minority of them (11%) declare having sexual activity. Eighty percent of those sexually active use condoms. This rather optimistic picture needs to be confirmed by qualitative measures of sexual behavior among the youth of HCMC. Gender specific interventions should be developed since there appear to be significant differences of knowledge, beliefs and practices between males and females. Other groups of young people should be investigated in order to have a better picture of the Vietnamese context at a time of expansion of the Aids epidemic.