Background : HIV is still one of the leading causes of Mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa, medical students are relatively inexperienced and therefore at higher risk of exposure and infection, awareness on PEP could highly reduce this risk.
Objective : To assess Awareness, Attitudes and perception towards PEP among students in kampala International University Western Campus.
Methodology : A cross sectional descriptive study design. Simple random sampling technique was used and data was collected by using Self-Assessment questionnaires regarding PEP distributed to students. The data was analyzed by SPSS version 16 software.
Results : A total of 232 students consented to participate in the study of which 218 (94%) were aware about existence of PEP, 59.2% students thought it should be used within 72hours of exposure and 64.7% thought it should be taken for a duration of 1month. Only 25.2% of the students had had a previous exposure. 94.5% of the students who had heard about it agreed that it was effective in controlling HIV transmission.
Conclusion: The findings show that on average most students are aware of the existence of PEP and believe its effective but there is need for impacting more knowledge including details on how it can be used with emphasis on when it can be initiated and for how long it should be taken.
