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Updated: Aug 14, 2026

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Published on: October 31, 2010
HIV/AIDS knowledge and attitudes amongst pharmacists in Zimbabwe
1Department of Pharmacy, University of Zimbabwe, P O Box MP 167, Mount Pleasant, Harare, Zimbabwe. dball@healthnet.zw
Objective:
To examine the knowledge of HIV/AIDS amongst pharmacists in Zimbabwe.
Design:
Cross sectional survey.
Setting:
National survey of pharmacists in major urban areas and final year pharmacy students at the University of Zimbabwe.
Subjects:
250 pharmacists and 47 pharmacy students with 126 completed questionnaires returned (42.4%).
Interventions:
The questionnaire asked for demographic details of the respondent, sources of knowledge about HIV/AIDS and measured knowledge (KW), fear of contagion (FC), negative emotions (NE) and professional resistance (PR) using a Likert scale of 1 to 5.
Main Outcome Measures:
Computed scores of KW, FC, NE and PR and reported sources of knowledge on HIV/AIDS.
Results:
All pharmacists scored highly on KW (mean [SEM] = 4.0 [0.0] with academics scoring the highest (4.2 [0.5]; n = 7) and private hospital pharmacists the lowest (3.7 [0.2]; n = 5). Medical books/journals and professional colleagues were the most important sources of information. Scores for FC (2.7 [0.1]), PR (2.4 [0.1]) and NE (2.1 [0.1]) were low. Government hospital pharmacists tended to have a higher KW score than those in private hospitals (4.1 [0.3] vs 3.7 [0.2] respectively). Most of the respondents believed that HIV/AIDS had increased their workload. However, they saw a role for pharmacists in the prevention and management of HIV/AIDS but felt there were important time constraints.
Conclusion:
Pharmacists can play an important part in the strategy to manage the national HIV/AIDS epidemic, but negative attitudes towards HIV/AIDS sufferers may adversely affect their efficiency.
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