Background: Antiretroviral therapy (ART) has increased life expectancy of HIV/AIDS patients, but the quality of life (QOL) still remains the same.
Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 356 people living with HIV (PLHIV) were interviewed to assess their QOL using WHOQOL-HIV BREF questionnaire. The association between QOL with sociodemographic, clinical and cohabitation status of the participants was tested using ANOVA and Student t-test, and p value < .05 was considered statistically significant.
Results: Physical domain of QOL showed maximum score of 16.4, while a minimum score of 12.2 was seen in social relationship domain. Participants with higher socioeconomic status (SES) and self-motivated to take ART had shown better scores across all the domains of QOL ( p < .05).
Conclusion: In our study, quality of life was high among males, younger patients, married participants, higher socioeconomic status, longer duration of ART, self-motivation to take ART, absence of opportunistic infection, and with higher CD4 count.
Keywords: HIV; WHOQOL-HIV BREF; antiretroviral therapy; people living with HIV; quality of life.