Impact of Counselling and Testing Programs on Control of HIV/Aids Among Rural Secondary School Students in Benue State

This research work is a cross-sectional study that investigated the impact of counselling and testing programmes on control of HIV/AIDS among rural secondary school students in Benue state. It has utilized 28 item HIV individual counselling and testing questionnaire with the cronbach's alpha of 0.76 to collect data. Two hundred and forty-seven (247) participants were sampled for the study by simple random selection of female and male secondary school students in Vandeikya Local Government Area of Benue state. The data was analyzed using dependent T-test at 0.1 significant levels. Result showed that counselling programmes impacted on control of HHIVIAIDS among rural secondary school students [t (247) = -98.045 P<.0.1 two tailed1J. It also indicated that testing programmes impacted on control of HIVIAIDS among rural secondary school students [t (247) =-28. 77423.P< 0.1 two tailed]. The mean difference of counselling programmes (29.64) and control of HIVIAIDS (52.19) with the standard deviation of 6.54 for counselling programmes and 8.03 for control of HIVIAIDS respectively. Equally, the mean difference of testing programmes (22.55) and (52.19) control of HIVIAIDS with standard deviation of 3.43 for testing programmes and 8.03 for control of HIVAIDS. The findings conclude that counselling and testing programmes have significant impact on control of HIVIAIDS among rural secondary school students in Benue State. I, therefore recommend that HIV counselling and testing should be made free and compulsory for every secondary school student in Benue State.