Abstract

Background: Early detection and treatment of people infected with HIV is key to the success of prevention and control of HIV infection. Moreover, increasing own HIV positive result disclosure is crucial, and is considered as a good indicator of behavior change towards HIV/AIDs. A systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted to pool the prevalence of positive HIV status disclosure to sexual partners and determine the influence of selected factors.

Methods: Primary studies were searched in Medline via PubMed, Google scholar and Google up to November, 2018, without time restriction. Data on disclosure of HIV positive result, knowledge of partner’s HIV status and prior discussion on HIV were extracted, and effect sizes like proportion and odds ratios were pooled by meta-analysis. Heterogeneity and publication bias were assessed by chi-square and Egger test, respectively.

Results: A total of 12 studies with 4528 participants were included to this review to estimate the prevalence of disclosure of HIV positive result to sexual partner, and 10 and 7 studies were included to determine the associations of the outcome variable with knowledge of sexual partners HIV status and prior discussion on HIV, respectively. The pooled prevalence of HIV status disclosure to sexual partner was 73% (95%CI: 64, 82%). Having the knowledge of sexual partner’s HIV status [OR: 95%CI; 17.63 (7.88, 39.45)] and had previous history of discussion on HIV [OR: 95%CI; 9.24 (5.56, 15.37)] significantly increased the likely hood of disclosing own HIV positive result to sexual partner. The sub-group analysis by location indicated a prevalence of  74% in Oromia, 86% in Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples (SNNPR), 87% in Amhara,  73% in Addis Ababa, and 54% in Tigray.

Conclusions: The prevalence of disclosure of HIV status to sexual partner is lower than expected. Knowledge of partner’s HIV status and previous discussion on HIV were strong predictors of HIV positive status disclosure. Strategies helpful for encouraging open HIV discussion need to be strengthened to increase HIV positive result disclosure.  Furthermore, since the heterogeneity of studies is high, large nationally representative study is suggested.

Key words: HIV disclosure; Factors; HIV patients, Systematic review, Meta-analysis.