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EFFECTIVENESS OF THE SHORT MESSAGING SERVICE USE ON PEOPLE LIVING WITH HIV/AIDS FOR TREATMENT, PREVENTION AND CONTROL IN KENYA: A CASE STUDY OF SWOP CLINIC

HIV/AIDs is a disease which has caused the loose of many lives globally especially in developing countries Kenya being one of them. Kenya is on track to achieve the global targets of zero new infections, zero Aids related deaths and zero discrimination by the year 2030. To achieve this target Kenya incorporated the use of mobile health in its hospitals which was seen as tool for treatment, prevention and control of HIV/AIDs which is a long life disease with the patients taking drugs for the rest of their life. However with even the use of mobile health, there has been slow progress of counteracting HIV/AIDs with estimation of new infections to be 52800 and 28200 deaths of Aids related sickness been reported annually in the year 2017. This research evaluated the effectiveness of mHealth initiative short message services (SMS) use on PLHIV as a tool for their treatment, prevention and control in SWOP clinic in Kenya. The research adapted health belief model (HBM) to evaluate whether its variables had an influence on effectiveness of short message services(SMS) use on PLHIV as tool for treatment, prevention and control of Aids. The research design adopted for the study was a survey research design. The population of study was PLHIV under ART and enrolled for SMS services. The instrument for data gathering used for the research was closed ended questionnaires. The sample size was 68. Simple random sampling technique was use to select a sample of 68 PLHIV at SWOP clinic. Descriptive and inferential analysis were the methods used for analysis of the data gathered. The study findings concluded that 83% of variations in effectiveness of the SMS were influenced by perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, perceived benefits, and perceived barriers, cue to action, self-efficacy, confidence, threat, cost and information. The study also recommends that there is a need for public private partnership to be established. This will help implementation of M-health initiatives as the private sector will be encouraged to heavily contribute in supporting the public sector. The research concluded that SMS is an effective tool for treatment prevention and control of HIV/AIDs.

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Author: nelly mutuli ndunda
Contributed by: reagan lax
Institution: university of nairobi
Level: university
Sublevel: post-graduate
Type: dissertations