Emergency contraceptive knowledge, utilization and associated factors among secondary school students in Wolkite town, s

  • PDF / 1,075,073 Bytes
  • 10 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
  • 111 Downloads / 239 Views

DOWNLOAD

REPORT


(2020) 5:15

RESEARCH

Contraception and Reproductive Medicine

Open Access

Emergency contraceptive knowledge, utilization and associated factors among secondary school students in Wolkite town, southern Ethiopia, cross sectional study Dereje Mesfin

Abstract Background: Ethiopia is one of the sub-Saharan African countries with high maternal mortality and morbidity, unsafe abortion and adolescent births. Despite different policy measures taken by the government to improve sexual and reproductive health among adolescents their success is not well studied in Ethiopia. The objective of this study is to explore emergency contraceptive related knowledge, practice and its determinants among secondary school students in southern Ethiopia. Methods: An institution-based cross-sectional study was conducted in selected high schools of Wolkite town, Southern Ethiopia from December to November 2019. Single population proportion formula was used to calculate sample size. A total of 327 female students participated in the study with a total response rate of 97%. Data were collected using a self-administered, structured questionnaire and cleaned, entered and analyzed using Statistical package for social science software version 21. Result: 153 (54.8%) of the study participants had good knowledge about emergency contraceptives and only (40.5%) of sexually active participates used emergency contraceptives after unprotected sex. Type of admission and grade level of participants and discussion of reproductive health related issues with parents were significantly associated with good knowledge of Emergency contraceptive. Having partner and grade level of students were among the significant determinants of emergency contraceptive utilization. Conclusion: The study showed an acceptable level of emergency contraceptive knowledge but only less than half of sexually active respondents used emergency contraceptives. To prevent unintended pregnancy among secondary school students sexual and reproductive health education should be given to students starting from their enrollment. Furthermore, parents should be encouraged to freely discuss sexual and reproductive health matters with their children. Keywords: Emergency contraceptive, Knowledge, Practice, Secondary schools

Correspondence: [email protected] Department of Public Health, Wolkite University College of Medicine and Health Science, Wolkite, Ethiopia © The Author(s). 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended