Background: Human immunodeficiency virus remains the leading cause of morbidity and mortality throughout the world. At the beginning of the epidemic, around 76.1 million people were infected and 32 million people died from AIDS-related illnesses in the world. Sub-Saharan Africa regions are the most affected regions and accounted for 67% of HIV infections worldwide, and 72% of the world’s AIDS-related deaths.
Objective: To show trends and contributing factors for the change of HIV prevalence over time among reproductive age group women in Ethiopia.
Methods: This study was conducted based on Ethiopian Demographic and Health Surveys data. A total of 10423 in 2005, 15153 in 2011, and 14159 in 2016 women were involved in the study. Multivariate decomposition analysis was performed using the mvdcmp Stata package to identify the contributing factors of change of HIV prevalence over time. The 95% confidence interval was used for the test of significance.
Results: This study showed that 90.4 % of the change in HIV prevalence over time was attributable to behavioral change over time, particularly in women who were rural residents and not exposed to media. The behavioral change of women who live in rural areas was the major factor for the decline of HIV for the last ten years. The behavioral change of women who hadn’t exposure to media contributed 98.4% to the decline of HIV prevalence over the past ten years.
Conclusion: The prevalence of HIV among reproductive age group women in Ethiopia was significantly declined over the last ten years and the decline was due to behavioral change over time. The major factor for the reduction of HIV prevalence overtime was the behavioral change of rural resident women. Therefore Ethiopian government should primarily focus on the strengthening and scaling up of behavioral change packages related to HIV prevention and control methods.