Reproductive Health Needs Of Urban And Rural Out Of School Adolescents In East Gojjam A Cross-sectional Comparative Study

Public Health Project Topics

Get the Complete Project Materials Now! ยป

A cross sectional comparative study involving adolescents aged 10-19 years was carried out inrnEast Gojjam in May 2001 to assess reproductive health needs of rural and urban out of schoolrnadolescents. A total of 12 kebeles were selected from four woredas by cluster sampling. Arnmodified random walk method was used to identify households. Data were collected from arntotal of 1001(96.3%) adolescents, of which 51% were from rural areas and 57% of thernparticipants were females. About 60% of them were found to be illiterate. Out of thernrespondents 45% of them reported they had started sex already. The mean age at first sex wasrnmuch lower than several previous studies. Moreover, 47% of the sexually active claimed tornhave more than one sexual partner. Though, knowledge on modern contraceptives and STD andrnHIV/AIDS seems good, 78% and 84% respectively, several misconceptions abound. Most ofrnthe study subjects belief that they are invulnerable for HIV. Only 21% and 13% of the sexuallyrnactive reported to have ever used contraceptives and condoms respectively. Sexual activity wasrnsignificantly higher among rural adolescents even after controlling for potential confoundingrnvariables, OR=3.0, 95%CI (1.9, 6.2). However, modern contraceptive use was ten times lowerrnamong rural adolescents in relation to urban, (OR= 0.10 95%CI = 0.04, 0.3). Forty three percentrnof the sexually active female adolescents had ever been pregnant, of which about 15% had arnhistory of abortion. Despite having all these health problems, only 8.7% of the participants hadrnvisited health institutions in three months prior to the study, of which 70% of them were urbanrndwellers. Based on these findings, it can be concluded that the majority of adolescents hadrnincomplete knowledge and most of them particularly those from rural areas were found to be atrngreater risk of reproductive and sexual health problems including HIV. Finally, programs thatrncomprise both promotional activities and reproductive health services that could serve the hardrnto reach out of school adolescents should be designed and implemented as a matter of priority.

Get Full Work

Report copyright infringement or plagiarism

Be the First to Share On Social



1GB data
1GB data

RELATED TOPICS

1GB data
1GB data
Reproductive Health Needs Of Urban And Rural Out Of School Adolescents In East Gojjam A Cross-sectional Comparative Study

214