Older persons’ AIDs knowledge and willingness to provide care in an impoverished nation: Evidence from Cambodia

Since the beginning of the global pandemic, assessing knowledge and attitudes regarding AIDS has been an important subject of research and for good reasons. Given the unusual features of HIV/AIDS, there is considerable potential for misunderstanding important aspects of the disease that could affect both behaviours related to risk exposure, as well as reactions to those known or believed to have contracted HIV. Most research on knowledge and attitudes has focused on young or prime aged adults. Far less common are systematic assessments of knowledge and attitudes among older persons, especially for developing countries, presumably because they are thought to be at less risk of exposure. In fact, older persons are also at risk of infection even if less so than prime age adults and their numbers will grow as effective treatments increasingly allow those infected at earlier ages to survive to old ages. Still, infected persons aged over 50 constitute a relatively modest share of the total caseload, especially in the developing world (Knodel, Watkins and VanLandingham, 2003).