ABSTRACT
Introduction Globally, the health of women has been of great concern for healthcare providers for the past many years. However, the concern is limited to maternal and adolescent health and the life course approach is lagging. Thus, a need was felt to study the changes after menopause and its influential factors by determining the prevalence of menopausal symptoms and medico-socio-cultural dimensions of menopause among perimenopausal and early postmenopausal women. Methodology A cross-sectional analytical study was conducted from February 2014 to April 2015 in a rural area of Puducherry among 148 women in perimenopausal and early postmenopausal stages by complete enumeration using a pre-tested semi-structured questionnaire. Prevalence was expressed as frequency with percentage and the chi-square test was used to find the association among the study variables. Results The prevalence of menopausal symptoms was in 143 (96.6%) women. Backache (62.3%) was found to have a higher prevalence. Physical symptoms (93.2%) were most prevalent. Of the women, 95% were affected by mild symptoms. Regarding medical and social dimensions of menopausal symptoms, socioeconomic status to vasomotor, age of menarche to physical, marital status, and abortion status to sexual symptoms were significant. A positive correlation was seen among the four menopausal symptom domains, except for vasomotor to sexual symptoms. Conclusion Increased prevalence of menopausal symptoms is seen among menopausal women who are unaware of seeking medical advice. Additional emphasis should be placed on implementing programmes that will critically help to sensitize and intensify the awareness of menopause among women in India.
ABSTRACT
Background and Objectives: Unmet need for contraception is the gap between women's reproductive intentions and their contraceptive behavior. This community based interventional study was carried out to determine the unmet needs for contraception, the reasons for this and to assess the impact of interventional measures on acceptance of contraception. Subjects and Methods: This study was conducted in 52 villages in the state of Maharashtra, India, among 363 married women selected by cluster sampling. Data was collected using an interview guide. An intervention was done for the women who had an unmet need and an assessment of the change was done subsequently. Data was analyzed by using SPSS. Results The prevalence of contraceptive usage was 59.2% and the prevalence of unmet need for contraception was 44% (160). The unmet need for spacing births was 53.8%, 38.7% for limiting births and 7.5% women were dissatisfied with the current contraceptive method. The reasons ranged from side effects to contraceptives to source of obtaining contraceptives. Age of the respondents, education and number of living children showed statistically significant association with unmet needs. Post intervention, the contraceptive prevalence rate increased significantly 85.7% and there was a significant reduction in the unmet needs for spacing and limiting births, equally there was a significant reduction of dissatisfaction with using contraception. Conclusion: Improvement in the use of contraception and addressing the unmet need for contraception requires community involvement and ongoing, sustained efforts by health workers to ensure quality care to the beneficiaries.
ABSTRACT
Introduction: Currently, there is a dearth of research into the elderly in Malaysia. More data is needed in order to plan services for them. Hypertension is an illness whose prevalance of hypertension among the elderly population of fourteen villages in Kedah. Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted on all elderly persons who consented to participate, in fourteen villages in the district of Kuala Muda in Kedah. A questionnaire was used for the data collection. Blood pressure was measured and participants were assessed for their activities of daily living using Barthel Index, cognitive impairment using Elderly Cognitive Assessmnet Questionnaire (ECAQ) and depression using Geriatric Depression Scale. Descriptive analysis, using SPSS version 11.0. was done to explore the data. Results: The total population of the villages was 3095 and 336 were 60 and above. A total of 240 elderly individuals agreed to participate giving a response rate of 71.4%. There were 138 females (57.5%) and 102 (42.45) males. Ninety-eight percent of the respondents were Malays (n=236) of which 57.2% were females and 42.8% males; the remaining 4 (1.7%) were Indians, of which 3 were females and 1 male. The prevalence of hypertension was 58.3% (n=140) in the villages. 138 (58.5%) of the Malays were hypertensive compared to 2 (50%) of the Indians. Half (51.4%) of those diagnosed as hypertensive were unaware of their condition and half (48.6%) of those known to have hypertension,the blood pressure was not controlled (p<0.05). Discussion:The results of the study are similar to the National Health and Morbidity Survey, 1996. Though the data is from an opportunistic sample and may not represent a larger population especially by race, the findings offer data for a pooled analysis. It is also very worrying to note that 48.6% of the people knew of their condition but did not do anything to control their blood pressure.
