Knowledge and attitude; STIs, HIV, Aids, RTIS, breast cancer and reproductive health among young females in Faisalabad district, Pakistan

ABSTRACT

Reproductive health is concerned with the people's ability to have a satisfying and safe sex life ensuring their capability to reproduce with a liberty of making a decision that if, when and how often they have to do so. In Pakistan, culturally females are married at a young age; become mothers and are at risk of health complications i.e. HIV/ STD and STI. There is less utilization of reproductive health services throughout Pakistan that ultimately affects health status of people at very young age. Most of the communities are not aware of reproductive health services, thus not availing these facilities. So the present study was designed to examine the females perceptions, attitude and practices about reproductive health services as well as to determine the level of their empowerment to take decisions and make choices regarding their own reproductive health besides determining the level of the quality, availability and accessibility of reproductive health services and to suggest some measures for policy makers to improve the reproductive health state of young mothers in district Faisalabad. A sample of 600 young married females of age 15-32 years was selected through multistage sampling technique. 2009. Rural and urban area of District Faisalabad. Uni-variate [frequency distribution and percentage] and Bi-variate analysis [Chi square and Gamma Statistics] was carried out. Most [44.0%] of the respondents belonged to age category of 26-30 years; 35.5% were married for 18 years; 39.3% had been married for 5 years; 71.8% had primary and above level of education. Majority [65.9%] had up to Rs.10,000 per month income, 49.2% possessed 6-10 family members, 73.5% had at least 2 and above live children. Majority had the knowledge of reproductive health [67.7%] and HIV/AIDs [54.7%] whereas most of females had no knowledge of STIs [69.8%], RTIs [52.3%] and its development [51.8%]. Most of the females experienced headache [62.8%], swelling of different body parts [61%] and back pain [62.7%] during their reproductive life. Bi-variate analysis showed highly significant relation among age at marriage, number of children, cultural hindrance and age of respondents vs. their reproductive health. Although most of the females were young and educated mothers with good reproductive health experience but still lacking in knowledge about STIs, HIV/AIDS, RTIs and breast cancer that is because of cultural hindrance, early age marriage pattern and male dominancy which indicates that we need to pay more attention towards female education and empowerment and decision making authority status at domestic level through community mobilization with the help of NGOs, Religious scholars and existing health system/ Health personnel's .i.e. doctors/ nurses /LHV/FHW