social context of disclosing hiv test results: hiv testing in tanzania

…eeh since I became sick, I had to go back home and stay with my parents
because I could not go on living alone in a rented house.
Disclosure of HIV-positive test results can help reduce HIV transmission if a
sexual partner is told right after the results have been learned. As mentioned earlier,
disclosure is a process that occurs in time, often over a long period of time. Therefore, it
may be useful to examine disclosure in terms of time elapsed since testing positive.
Given its complexity, we anticipated finding differences in how and when and where
disclosure occurred.
Table 7.1 below provides a summary of the time that people living with
HIV/AIDS took before disclosing their HIV test results to their significant others.
Table 7.1 People living with HIV/AIDS, by sex and time to first disclosure
Time from HIV testing
to first disclosure of results
Female
People living with HIV/AIDS
Male Total
Percent Number Percent Number Percent Number
1 month 33.3 9 24.3 7 28.1 16
1 - 6 months 22.2 6 13.3 4 17.5 10
6 -12 months 7.4 2 3.3 1 5.3 3
More than 1 year 0.0 0 6.7 2 3.5 2
No disclosure 0.0 0 3.3 1 1.8 1
Not stated 37.0 10 50.0 15 43.9 25
Total 100.0 27 100.0 30 100.0 57
According to Table 7.1, more than one-quarter of the respondents living with
HIV/AIDS disclosed their test results to others within a period of less than one month.
About 18 percent disclosed between periods of one to six months, 5 percent disclosed
between a period of six months to one year, and 4 percent did so after more than one
year. Only one out of 32 respondents had not disclosed to anyone after more than one
year had passed. The information derived from the interviews shows that 25 of 57
respondents (44 percent) did not provide information on the duration between testing and
disclosure.
Overall, only five people out of the 114 respondents failed to disclose their test
results to anyone at all: three single females, one divorced male, and one married male.
The discussion of disclosure among different social groups below provides a fuller
picture of how disclosure occurs.
7.5 Disclosure among Different Social Groups
The social group of reference to individuals and the social interactions in which
they participate tend to determine how different individuals decide to share the results of
their HIV tests with others. The criteria for classifying respondents are marital status and
having a sexual partner. The variation of patterns of disclosure is also determined by the
type of reaction a person anticipates from others as well as the type of support one
expects. Below are some examples of why, how, and when people who differ by marital
status and having a sexual partner disclosed their test results.
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