Socioeconomic disparities and the distribution of HIV in Cameroon: a multilevel logistic regression analysis

Abstract Background: There have been controversial debates on the relationship between socioeconomic status and the distribution of HIV in Cameroon. We aim to illustrate the vulnerability of socioeconomic disparities and the risk of getting HIV for public health interventions. Methods: Descriptive statistics was conducted to quantify the socioeconomic gradients of HIV. A Multilevel logistic regression model was used to study the relationship between socioeconomic factors and HIV. The effect of the factors was presented as odds ratios (OR), with 95% confidence intervals (CIs). P-value less than 0.05 was considered to be statistically significant. We further mapped HIV prevalence in ArcGIS to visualize the regional distribution of HIV.Results: HIV was significantly associated with age (p<0.001), sex (p<0.001) and varies significantly by geographic region (p<0.001), level of education (p=0.001), wealth status (p<0.001), religion (p=0.042), ethnicity (p<0.001) and residence (p=0.001). HIV positive participants were more likely to be women, people with higher educational level, live in urban areas, practice the protestant religious belief, belong to the ethnicity of Kako/Meka/Pygmy and distributed in the East, South, and Yaoundé regions. Age, sex, region, education level, and ethnicity were significantly associated with the odds of having HIV from the multilevel regression model. Conclusion: Our finding recommends for novel intervention programs that will target the various socioeconomic factors associated with the odds of having HIV for proper public health management of the disease in Cameroon.