INFORMATION NEEDS AND RESOURCE UTILIZATION BY PEOPLE LIVING WITH HIV/ AIDS

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background to the study

Managing information is an important part of coping with illness and includes communicative and cognitive activities seeking, avoiding, providing, appraising, and interpreting information. It is complex in that people’s information needs and behavior vary over the course of their illness and along with the availability and quality of information. In recent years, considerable research has been done on how people living with Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (PLWHIV/AIDS) manage information. However, understanding of the role of information in the HIV/AIDS in ESUT Teaching Hospital, Park lane is still limited, because of the diiculties of reaching dierent groups of PLWHA. This study has been designed to reach many segments of the diverse HIV/AIDS community and broaden under standing of how information can better assist PLWHA. Information can be regarded as a resource that can liberate man. Osuala (2001) refers to information as facts and opinions provided and received during the course of life. A person using such facts generate more information some of which is communicate to others during discussion, by letters, symbols, etc. Aniogbolu, (2008) noted that most information users need information for problem solving, current awareness and recreational purpose. According to Aniogbolu (2008), the importance of information utilization by man to his development is becoming more meaningful to him as his information accumulation ability’s is taking a new dimension with the development of highly sophisticated information technology (Aniogbolu, Anyaobi & Olise, 2010). Information needs is oen understood as vague awareness of something missing and culminating in locating information that contributes to understanding and meaning (Kuhlthau, 2009). Belkin, Brooks and Oddy. (2008) in their part saw information needs as a gap in individual’s knowledge in sense making situations. Accessibility to the right information is necessary for the general well being of the individual, institution or organization.

One of the most devastating sources of our time is HIV/AIDS; undoubtedly HIV/AIDS presents a major challenge to human development in Nigeria. Ojoawo, (2006) apart from poverty, no problem has given Nigeria a more daunting challenge than the present battle with HIV/AIDS. AIDS in indeed devastating Nigerian communities and poses a real threat to poverty reduction eort and the achievement of the United Nation Millennium Development Goals, (UNMDG). Indeed HIV/AIDS presents a serious challenge to Human Development in Nigeria because the exact cause of and spread of the epidemic is still very diicult to calculate. In Nigeria, the first case of AIDS was diagnosed in 1986. The infection rate has however, grown exponentially. Since then, by June 1999, the Federal Ministry of Health, (FMOH) in Nigeria had recorded 26,276 AIDS cases. Due to fear of stigmatization several cases are not reported through the hospitals, which mean the reported cases were gross under estimations of the rate of occurrence of the epidemic. The National AIDS/STDS Control Progremmes (NASCP) of FMOH estimated that the calculated number of AIDS cases would have reached 590,000 by the end of 1999 (Ojoawo, 2006).