Polygamy and safe sex negotiation among married women: evidence from Cameroon.

BACKGROUND: Research indicates that women in polygamous relationships may be exposed to unique sexual and reproductive health challenges. However, there are very few studies that examine whether polygamy is associated with safe sex negotiation among married women in sub-Saharan Africa, including Cameroon. METHODS: Using the 2018 Cameroon Demographic and Health Survey, we apply logistic regression analysis to compare two indicators of safe sex negotiation (i.e., the ability to ask for condom use and refuse sex against their partner) between polygamous (n = 1,628) and monogamous (n = 5,686) women aged 15-49 years old. RESULTS: We find that 67% and 50% of married women can ask for condom use and refuse sex against their partner, respectively. Multivariate analysis further reveals that women in polygamous relationships are less likely to report they can ask for condom use (OR = 0.71, p < 0.001) and refuse sex (OR = 0.64, p < 0.001) in comparison to their monogamous counterparts. CONCLUSIONS: Our analysis found that in Cameroon, women in polygamous relationships, Muslim women, married women with inadequate HIV knowledge, those who had never been tested for HIV and women with lower socioeconomic status are less likely to negotiate for safe sex. Based on these findings, we discuss several implications for policymakers, including the establishment of a comprehensive family planning educational program and the deployment of community health workers to disseminate educational initiatives pertaining to safe sex negotiation to community members.

An investigation of the Sustainability of Village Savings and Loans Associations (VSLAs) amidst Covid-19 and its impact on household income levels: lessons from Malawi, Sub-Saharan Africa.

BACKGROUND: Food security, malnutrition, and poverty are some of the challenges that most of the sub-Saharan African countries have been historically facing. With the coming of Covid-19 pandemic, the sustainability of the Village Savings and Loans Association which are formed to counter fight these challenges is questioned. AIM: This study aimed to assess factors associated with the Sustainability of VSLAs amidst Covid-19 and its impacts on households' income levels. METHODS: An online cross-sectional design was conducted from November to January 2021, targeting VSLAs members in Mzuzu. A snowball and respondent-driven sampling technique were used to recruit the needful participants using a referral approach. IBM SPSS version 23 was used to perform descriptive statistics, Chi-Square, and binary logistic regression with unstandardized Beta (ß), Odds Ratios (OR), and 95% Confidence Interval (CI) being taken into account with P-value set at 0.1, 0.05 and 0.01 significance levels. RESULTS: Our study finds that household income declined by 54% for those earnings belonged to ˂ MK5,000, as compared to 38% and 15% for medium (MK5,000 ≥ MK10,000) and higher (> MK10,000) income bands respectively. Our study shows that gender (ß = 0.437, p = 0.094), age-group (ß = 1.317, p = 0.000), education (ß = 2.181, p = 0.047), share contributions (ß = 1.035, p = 0.008), meetings (ß = 0.572, p = 0.021), occupation (ß = -0.453, p = 0.106), and frequency of meeting (ß = -0.507, p = 0.049) were positively and negatively statistically significant predictors. CONCLUSION: According to the findings of this study, households with lower income earners, which is one of the indicators of poverty, are more affected by the pandemic than their counterparts. We urge that the Malawi governments should maintain and, if they haven't already, implement programs that support low-income households, such as transfer payments, which have been shown to uplift people out of income poverty in many developing countries.