Objective: It is aimed to evaluate HIV/AIDS awareness levels of health-related faculty students at Istanbul Aydın University (IAU) and determine their attitudes towards this patient group.

Methods: IAU Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry, and Health Sciences students participated in this study. A questionnaire consisting of 50 questions was applied to participants.

Results: A total of 154 of 160 students who participated in the study completed the questionnaire (female: 115, male: 39). The mean agewas 21.42 and 22 for the girls and boys, respectively. Regarding the faculties of the participants, 63% were from the Health Sciences while 31.8% from Medicine and 5.2% from Dentistry. The ratios of the correct answers to the question categories were listed as follows: general information 77.02%; transmission route of the disease 65.84%; risk groups 64.88%; prevention and treatment 60.59% and the attitudes towards the patients were 70.28% (p<0.01). The participants reported that they acquired their knowledge on AIDS from the internet (85.63%) and radio broadcast (4.38%).

Conclusion: It was observed that incorrect information received from the internet caused the development of negative attitudes, even in students from Health-related faculties. Prevention of the transmission of fraud information and speech of hate on AIDS disease and the patients, together with the peer education, which is an important learning tool among young people, can be used to increase HIV/AIDS awareness in university campuses and prevent the social stigma related to AIDS in public. The research shows the importance of getting medical advice from Virology, Microbiology, or Infectious Diseases specialists when preparing movie-series scenarios about HIV/AIDS.