Introduction: The Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) pandemic continues to be one of the major public health crises in Nigeria and the world, with approximately 17 million people globally living with the virus. To achieve the desired outcome of epidemiological control of HIV/AIDS, strict adherence to antiretroviral therapy is vital. However, many factors have been identified for non-adherence. This research work was designed to determine the extent of adherence to antiretroviral therapy, factors responsible for the non-adherence and the measures used to ensure adherence among people living with HIV/AIDS. Methodology: A cross sectional design was adopted, with a sample size of 417 ARV sero-positive that access ART services at Braithwaite Memorial Specialist Hospital in Port Harcourt local government area Rivers State. Five research questions and three null hypotheses guided the study, with respondents’ medication adherence adapted from the Morrisky Medication Adherence scale, and the responses classified into good, fair, and poor medication adherence respectively. Data was collected using an interviewer-administered structured questionnaire (IAQ) and were analysed using SPSS version 21.0. Results: Results revealed that 70.7% of the study population/ respondents were female between the age ranges 20-39 years and 50.7% were married. The extent of adherence to ART amongst the study respondents were 86.0% and out of the eleven (11) variables studied nine (9) were found to be statistically significant associated with respondents’ extent of medication adherence. This includes sex (P-value 0.000;95% CI0.00,0.001), age (P-value 0.000;95% CI0.00,0.001), marital status(P-value 0.000;95% CI0.00,0.001), occupation(P-value 0.000;95% CI0.00,0.001), residential area(P-value 0.000;95% CI0.00,0.001), duration of illness(P-value 0.000;95% CI0.00,0.001), duration on ARVs(P-value 0.000;95% CI0.00,0.001), partner’s status(P-value 0.000;95% CI0.00,0.001), partner/family awareness of respondent status(P-value 0.000;95% CI0.36,0.45), and long waiting time(P-value 0.000;95% CI0.00,0.001), respectively. Also, respondent ARV regimens of respondents were found to be statistically associated with adherence respectively (p-value 0.000; 95% CI0.00, 0.001). 92.0% of the study respondent ensured adherence to ART using self-reminder, while there was high adherence rate.Summary/conclusion: There is high adherence to ART medication among PLWHIV/AIDS, especially among the married, of reproductive age group and literates. However, counsellors need to lay emphasis on the need for the disclosure of serostatus among partners and friends/family awareness about HIV status, since half of the respondents.
Keywords: Adherence, Antiretroviral therapy (ART), PLWHIV/AIDS, gender and education.
