Children’s Adherence to Antiretroviral Therapy and Associated Factors: Multi-center Cross-sectional Study

Abstract Background- Sub- optimal adherence to antiretroviral therapy will lead drug resistance, treatment failure, clinical deterioration, death and failure to thrive in children. Studies conducted among children below 15 years old were limited in Ethiopia in general and in study area in particular. Therefore, this study was aimed to assess status of children’s adherence to ART and associated factors in study area.Methods- We conduct a facility-based cross-sectional study by including total of 282 children <15 years, who received Anti retro viral therapy for at least one month. All children/caregivers who were attending ART clinic during data collection period were consecutively recruited to the study. Both bivariate and multivariate logistic regression were performed.Result- Out of 282 caregivers included with their children, 226(80.2%) were females (mean age= 38.6 and SD = 12.35) and out of the total children, half (50%) were female and 246(87.2%) were between the ages 5–14 years (mean age= 8.5 and SD = 2.64). Two hundred forty six (87.2%) children had adherence status of ≥95% in the month prior to interview. Children whose caregivers were residing in urban were 3.3 (95% CI: 1.17, 9.63) times more adherent to ART than those whose caregivers were residing in rural. Children whose caregivers were biological parent were 2.37(95% CI: 1.59, 3.3) times more adherent than those whose caregivers were non biological parent. Also children of caregivers who were knowledgeable about ART treatment, were 4.5(95% CI: 1.79, 9.8) times more adherent to ART than their counter partsConclusion and recommendation- Adherence status of children in our study area was comparable. Being biological caregivers, residing in urban and knowledgeable about ART treatment were facilitate adherence to ART. Ongoing education about treatment and further study with multiple adherence assessment method were recommended.