Level of Dietary Diversity and Associated Factors among Adult Patients on HAART at Public Health Facilities of Ambo town, West Shoa Zone Ethiopia

Background: Nutrition and HIV are strongly related to each other, any immune impairment as a result of HIV/ AIDS leads to malnutrition, and malnutrition leads to immune impairment. HIV infected patients are at nutritional risk at any time of their illness. In developing countries HIV/AIDS, food insecurity and malnutrition are common. Dietary diversity scores have been positively correlated with increased micronutrient adequacy of diet in adults. Thus this study aims to assess level dietary diversity and associated factors among Adults on HAART at Public Health facilities of Ambo town. Methods and Materials: The study was conducted at Ambo Town, West Shoa Zone Ethiopia. A facility-based crosssectional study was conducted from January 26-February 26, 2019. A total of 313 study participants were included in the study. Systematic random sampling technique was applied to reach the study subjects. A structured questionnaire which included socio-demographic and health-related factors were prepared based on objectives of the study after reviewing different kinds of literature. Questionnaires on Dietary diversity were adopted from FAO 2010. Data were coded and entered to Epi-data version 3.1 and exported to SPSS version 21 for analyses. Frequency, mean and standard deviations from descriptive statistics and analytic statistics such as bivariate and multivariable logistic regression analysis were computed to determine the effect of various factors on the outcome variable. Result: In this study, 310 HIV positive adults on HAART follow up at Public health facilities of Ambo town were participated in the study making a response rate of 99%. This study shows 71% of adults had low individual dietary diversity score. It was noticed that HIV positive Males were 57% less likely to have low dietary diversity than females (AOR at 95% CI=0.43 (0.21-0.87). Adult patients those who were separated from their husband/wife were about 68% less likely to have low dietary diversity than widowed HIV positive adults (AOR at 95% CI=0.32 (0.11-0.88). Monthly income was also seen to be the factors significantly associated with dietary diversity. Conclusion and Recommendation: This study revealed that about 71% of adult patients on HAART had low dietary diversity score which indicates severe nutrient inadequacy among the study participants. Therefore the town administration, NGO’s working on HIV and other stakeholders should work on empowering females and sustainable income generating projects for HIV patients.