Abstract

The United Nations reported that HIV and AIDS have negative impact upon agriculture and increasing hunger in sub-Saharan Africa. Such a situation is postulated to synonymously occur in Nigeria. This study therefore, aimed to investigate the prevalence level of HIV antibodies and AIDS among traditional crop farmers and non-farmers comprising traders, drivers, teachers and students in Kogi East. This is one of the primary agricultural areas of Kogi State, Nigeria and is therefore of great importance to perform an assessment depicting the prevalence of local HIV infection. Documented records of HIV antibody screening from the year 2002 to 2006 at the Voluntary Counselling and HIV Testing Unit of General Hospital, Ankpa, Kogi East were reviewed. Selected data was statistically analyzed utilizing SPSS v.13.0 using Chi² - test. A total of 11,077 patients from the ages of two months to 72 years were screened during the five years. Of this, 2,510 (22.70%; n = 5; mean = 25.1%; standard deviation [SD] = 10.23%), HIV positive cases and 322 (12.80%, n = 5; mean = 12.47%; SD = 2.23%) and AIDS-related deaths were documented. By sub-sampling the group this included 250 (77.6%, mean = 71.91%; SD = 15.72%) farmers. A significant higher number of farmers were seropositive (χ² = 72.710; p = 0.001, df = 1, α = 0.05) and died (χ² = 93.255; p = 0.001, df = 1, α = 0.05) of AIDS-related illness compared to the non-farmers. The ages of people that died range from 12 to 49 years (n = 322) with a mean age of 44.1 years. Throughout the specified five years sampling duration, more non-farmers than farmers partook in HIV antibody screening. Farmers that were seropositive for HIV antibodies and died of AIDS-related illness were significantly higher than those of non-farmers.

Key words: HIV, AIDS, farmers, Kogi, Nigeria.