Abstract
BACKGROUND: HIV/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a major public health problem and a development predicament that affects all sectors, drastically affecting the health, economic, and reducing social life expectancy, deepening poverty, and contributing to and exacerbating food shortages. Strict adherence to antiretroviral therapy (ART) regimen is essential to obtain the desired benefit and to avoid the emergence of drug resistance and clinical failure; therefore, this study is aimed to assess the antiretroviral (ARV) adherence among the HIV patients and suggesting them by possible ways for improving the adherence. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted in Batu Hospital, Batu town. The sample size was found to be 160, and systemic random sampling was used to collect data by providing a pretested structured questionnaire. The qualitative data were analyzed to identify the significance of the relationship between the dependent and independent variables. RESULTS: A total of 160 patients was agreed to involve in our survey, 85.6% of patients were adherent by self-report. The main reason of nonadherence cited by the patients were; being away from home for some social reasons (33.4%), being too busy with other things (25.0%), simply forgot to take their ART (25.0%), developed toxicity or side effects (8.3%), having problems for fear of stigma and disclosure (8.3%), and (7.5%) of participants also shortage of ARV medications at hand because of some public holidays or weekends that coincide with date of appointments. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS: The self-report adherence rate was higher than that seen in developing countries. Programs and clinical efforts to improve medication taking in the study setups should strive to provide the regular follow-up for patients, increase patients' awareness of the side effects of ARVs and possible remedies, integrate medications better into patients' daily routines, improve patients' confidence, trust, and satisfaction with their caregivers, and teach patients to use memory aids.