Continuing medical education needs regarding AIDS among Egyptian physicians in Alexandria Egypt and in the Asir region Saudi Arabia.

Control of the AIDS epidemic depends upon preventing HIV infection through education information and the curtailment or avoidance of known risk behaviors. Physicians are in an uniquely good position to provide the information and education needed to help limit the spread of HIV with several studies having demonstrated the ability of physician counseling to promote health behaviors among patients. The curricula of faculties of medicine in Egypt however were only recently changed to include AIDS. It is clear that the overwhelming majority of physicians in Egypt graduated and have specialized without formal education about the disease. Continuing medical education (CME) programs are provided to physicians in Egypt and other Gulf countries. To plan for such programs however the extent of the knowledge and needs among physicians must be determined. This paper reports findings from an assessment of the AIDS education needs of two groups of physicians. One group was comprised of 330 physicians working in Alexandria Egypt in maternal-child healthcare units school health units and health offices. The second group included 144 physicians working in primary health care centers in the Asir Region of southwestern Saudi Arabia. The demographic and sociocultural background of both groups was similar; respondents were of mean age 36 years and approximately 65% were male. Similar deficiencies were found in their knowledge about AIDS especially modes of transmission. 20% of the physicians considered themselves to have only minimal knowledge about AIDS and 97% of both groups were very interested to learn more about the disease. 8.2% and 13.2% respectively believed that a cure exists for AIDS while 5.5% and 6.9% respectively thought that vaccines are available against the disease. Only 16.7% and 11.8% of physicians respectively recommended keeping identified cases of AIDS in the community with the remainder endorsing confining people with AIDS to hospitals or elsewhere in isolation. These results highlight the urgent need to develop an AIDS-specific CME program for medical practitioners in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. 62.5% of the physicians preferred to receive CME from lecturers 50.3% from books and periodicals 44.8% in conferences and 42.1% in workshops.