ABSTRACT
As estimated by WHO, globally a total of 36.9 million [34.3 – 41.4 million] people were living with HIV in 2014. Quality of life (QOL) of HIV/AIDS patients is becoming an important element for understanding and assessing the overall health care and management in health care settings. The objective of this study was to determine the QOL of patients living with HIV/AIDS in Delhi. Systemic Random sampling method was used to identify the subjects from the antiretroviral therapy clinic (ART) situated in tertiary care hospital in Delhi. Methods: 200 patients were interviewed with the WHOQOL-HIV instrument. Questionnaire included items on socio-demographic data, multi-item scales and had six domains namely physical, psychological, level of independence, social relationships, environment and spirituality religion. Results: Study subjects were aged between 18-60 years with mean age of 34.46±8.76 years, and comprised of 41%females. 29 % of studied subjects were illiterate. More than 1/3rd of the patients (84% females) were unemployed and did not have any source of income. All QOL domains were observed to be higher for males in comparison to females. Single/widow patients had better QOL in comparison to married patients. QOL was observed to be better among those who were young, had better educational qualifications, were employed, asymptomatic, had shorter duration of treatment and those who stayed closer to the ART center. Conclusion: Correlation of scores of six domains with overall QOL score and among individual domains was found to be statistically significant.