Sociodemographic factors and health in a population of children living in families infected with HIV in Fortaleza and Salvador, Brazil

Abstract

This study explores the relationships between demographic, socioeconomic and health statuses of children whose parents were HIV positive in two cities in Northeast Brazil. We conducted a multisite exploratory study in HIV/AIDS referral services for HIV/AIDS in Fortaleza, the capital of Ceará State, and Salvador, the capital of Bahia State, between June 2008 and March 2009. The study population consisted of 562 HIV+ adults - or caretakers of children of HIV+ adults – who provided information about a single index child under 13 years of age of either sex in their household. A structured questionnaire was used for to the adult parent or caretaker. We used multiple correspondence analysis (MCA), as implemented in the software SPAD (Portable Système pour l'Analyse des données). This analysis enabled us to identify the relationships between a large number of variables simultaneously. Of the 562 children, 311 (55.3%) lived in Fortaleza and 251 (44.7%) lived in Salvador. The proportion of HIV-infected children in Fortaleza was 14.2%, and 61.4% (27/44) of these had progressed to AIDS. In Salvador 34.7% of children were seropositive and 95% (83/87) were diagnosed with AIDS. The most important factors that emerged from the study were city and serostatus of the children. These two active variables accounted for 75.3% of the variance. Results are grouped into four profiles that describe the complex of socioeconomic variables closely associated with these families, and the complex and multiple epidemics of HIV, discrimination and poverty associated with theseAIDS-affected families.