HIV-positive parents, HIV-positive children, and HIV-negative children’s perspectives on disclosure of a parent’s and child’s illness in Kenya
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Epidemiology, Global Health, HIV, Infectious Diseases, Public Health
- Keywords
- HIV/AIDS, HIV disclosure, Resource-poor nation, Child HIV status disclosure, Parent HIV status disclosure, Qualitative research, Kenya
- Copyright
- © 2014 Gachanja et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2014. HIV-positive parents, HIV-positive children, and HIV-negative children’s perspectives on disclosure of a parent’s and child’s illness in Kenya. PeerJ PrePrints 2:e303v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.303v1
Abstract
HIV disclosure from parent to child is complex and challenging to HIV-positive parents and healthcare professionals. This study was conducted to understand the lived experiences of HIV-positive parents and their children during the disclosure process in Kenya. Sixteen HIV-positive parents, seven HIV-positive children, and five HIV-negative children underwent semistructured in-depth interviews. Data was analyzed using the Van Kaam method in NVivo 8. Seven themes emerged that spanned the disclosure process. Presented here is data on the theme about how participants recommend full disclosure be approached to HIV-positive and negative children. Participants recommended disclosure as a process starting at five years with full disclosure delivered at 10 years when the child was capable of understanding the illness; or by 14 years when the child was mature enough to receive the news if full disclosure had not been conducted earlier. Important disclosure considerations include the parent’s and/or child’s health statuses, the number of infected persons’ illnesses to be disclosed to the child, the child’s maturity and understanding level, addressing important life events (e.g., taking a national school examination), and the person best suited to deliver full disclosure to the child. Recommendations are made for inclusion into HIV disclosure guidelines, manuals, and programs.