Knowledge, Attitude and Practice of Healthcare Workers Towards Availability of Antiretroviral pre-exposure prohylaxis in nigeria pre-exposure prohylaxis in nigeria pre-exposure prohylaxis in nigeria pre-exposure prohylaxis in nigeria pre-exposure prohylaxis in nigeria pre-exposure prohylaxis in nigeria pre-exposure prohylaxis in nigeria pre-exposure prohylaxis in nigeria pre-exposure prohylaxis in nigeria pre-exposure prohylaxis in nigeria pre-exposure prohylaxis in nigeria pre-exposure prohylaxis in nigeria pre-exposure prohylaxis in nigeria pre-exposure prohylaxis in nigeria Pre-exposure Prohylaxis in Nigeria - Knowledge, Attitude and Practice of Healthcare Workers Towards Availability of Antiretroviral pre-exposure prohylaxis in nigeria pre-exposure prohylaxis in nigeria pre-exposure prohylaxis in nigeria pre-exposure prohylaxis in nigeria pre-exposure prohylaxis in nigeria pre-exposure prohylaxis in nigeria pre-exposure prohylaxis in nigeria pre-exposure prohylaxis in nigeria pre-exposure prohylaxis in nigeria pre-exposure prohylaxis in nigeria pre-exposure prohylaxis in nigeria pre-exposure prohylaxis in nigeria pre-exposure prohylaxis in nigeria pre-exposure prohylaxis in nigeria Pre-exposure Prohylaxis in Nigeria - Open Access Pub

Introduction: The introduction of preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) against incident HIV infection has changed the epidemiology of disease as continuous treatment with tenofovir and emtricitabine among high risk groups can reduce the relative risk for incident HIV infection by over 90%.However,despite the approved use of TDF+FTC, as a fixed dose combination of emtricitabine 200 mg and tenofovir disoproxil fumarate 300 mg, for oral PrEP since 2012 , it does not appear to have become widely accepted and in use among healthcare workers especially those in low income countries. Researches are therefore needed to consider the awareness and practice of health workers towards the availability of PrEP services in this part of the world. Healthcare workers are expected to be promoters of the use of PrEP services. Method: A cross sectional questionnaire-based study conducted in southern Nigerian over a 6 months period. Data were collected from 250 healthcare workers using interviewer-administered questionnaires. The data analysis was done using statistical package for the social sciences (SPSS) for windows version 20.0 software (SPSS Inc; Chicago, IL, USA). Frequency counts were generated for all variables and statistical test of significance was performed with chi-square test. Significance was fixed at P < 0.05 and highly significance if P < 0.01. Results: A high proportion of the respondents(>60%) were highly educated healthcare workers(majorly Nurses and medical doctors) and about half (55%) having at least 10yrs working experience in the health sector with most especially on the HIV program(>90%), majority (94%) of the health workers were aware about ARV pre-exposure prophylaxis but very few ( 6% )could give the standard definition for PrEP as the use of ARV drugs by HIV negative persons to prevent the acquisition of HIV.Most(67%) of them gave wrong definition for PrEP and worse still about one fifth (20%) had no idea what PrEP was all about. Most (70%) could not correctly identify all the ARV drugs in a standard PrEP regimen while about 35% had no idea at all of the approved ARVs used for PrEP. Though PrEP services was not available at any of the facilities where the respondents were working ,the approved drugs(TDF+FTC) for PrEP were available at about 40% of the health facilities(public and private) and 15% community pharmacies in the vicinity of the respondents . Only 60% of the respondents were willing to access PrEP service for themselves if indicated while 35% would not use such services even if it is indicated for reasons which include concern about