HIV/AIDS awareness and risk behavior among students in Semey, Kazakhstan: a cross-sectional survey

To gather information about young students and their attitudes and knowledge about HIV/AIDS, we collected 600 structured questionnaires and made 23 semi-structured interviews among three groups of students. Response rate was 99%.Almost 99% of the respondents had heard of HIV/AIDS, and 89% could identify ways to protect oneself against sexually transmitted HIV/AIDS. The main routes of transmission, sexual contact without condom and intravenous drug use, were both identified by 97% of the students. Twenty-five percent of the female students and 75% of the male students had had one or more sexual partners. More than 30% of the young men had purchased sex, and homosexuality was widely stigmatized.Risks for the spread of HIV/AIDS among young people in Kazakhstan include prostitution as well as stigmatization of the HIV positive and of homosexuals. Protective factors are good knowledge about risks and protection, and opportunities to talk and gather information about sexuality and HIV/AIDS.The Republic of Kazakhstan is a large country with a relatively small population of 15 million people. It was formerly part of the Soviet Union and is now a multiethnic society with some 100 different ethnic groups, dominated by Russians and Kazakhs. The main religions are Islam, 47%, and Russian Orthodox Christianity, 44%, although it is a relatively secular country. Kazakhstan had some difficult years after the fall of the Soviet Union but now the economy is growing fast, with the GNP increasing by over 10% per year. The relatively stable political situation, the absence of armed conflicts and the vast amounts of natural resources all give hope for future economic progress [1]. Semey, or Semipalatinsk as it is called in Russian, is a city in northeastern Kazakhstan with approximately 293,000 inhabitants, one of the larger industrial cities in the country and long the centre for the Soviet nuclear weapon testing.Central Asia and Eastern Europe still have low numbers of reported HIV cas