Reproductive and sexual health seeking behaviour and autonomy among women residing in the urban practice area of a teaching hospital in a North-Eastern state in India.

Reg No: 125

Abstract

Background: Governments come up with different strategies to meet the unmet needs of family planning along with other services for reproductive and sexual health. Yet, the awareness and utilization of these services are often poor, especially in developing countries. Hence, a cross sectional study was conducted to assess the reproductive and sexual health seeking behaviour and autonomy among women residing in the urban practice area of a teaching hospital in a North-eastern state in India.

Methodology: Interview was conducted for 117 consenting women for the study using a pre-designed and a pre-tested questionnaire. Data was entered in Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and analysed using the software Epi Info version 7.

Results: Majority of the participants (64%) were married out of whom 10.7% were married before the legal age of 18. Fifty nine percentage had already undergone pregnancy with 4% of them conceiving before the age of 18. Regarding sexual health, 77% of the study population had sexual experience out of whom, 9% were below 18 years during their experience. Only 43% of the participants had used contraceptives during their first sexual exposure. Health seeking behaviour regarding sexual and reproductive health was also poor among majority of the study participants (92.3%). Autonomy was found to be high in 68.7%, moderate in 22.5% and poor in 8.8% of the study participants. No significant association was found between socio-demographic parameters and reproductive and sexual autonomy.

Conclusion: Health seeking behaviour was poor among study population, however, sexual and reproductive autonomy was found to be high among majority of the study population. This could be due to the high literacy rate and attainment of high degree of education found among the study participants. The cultural and social variation in status of women in the society could also contribute to this.