Adolescent knowledge and awareness about AIDS/HIV and factors affecting them in Bangladesh.

BACKGROUND: Adolescents are more vulnerable than adults of unplanned pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS. Among the adolescents, girls are more vulnerable to STDs including HIV/AIDS. Their knowledge about different diseases is very poor. This paper investigated adolescent's knowledge about sexually transmitted diseases including HIV/AIDS, its mode of transmission and ways of its prevention. METHODS: Cross sectional study design was adopted for this study. A multistage cluster sampling technique was used to select the sample. Data on 3362 female adolescents irrespective of their marital status was analyzed. RESULTS: The study found that a large proportion of adolescents were not aware about sexually transmitted diseases and AIDS. More than half (54.8%) of the adolescents ever heard about AIDS respectively. On an…