Sexuality and reproductive health

Sexuality is an important human phenomenon which is influenced by interaction of biological, psychological, social, cultural or religious factors. Many studies in sub-Saharan Africa have shown that multiple sexual partnerships contribute to the spread of HIV despite the high knowledge of HIV/AIDS transmission routes. Past studies on sexual behaviours in Nigeria have focused on women and adolescents while men’s sexuality has not been adequately explored. This study used data extracted from 2007 National HIV/AIDS and Reproductive Health Survey of sexually active Nigerian men aged 15-64years to investigate correlates and pattern of sexual partnership among men in Nigeria using multilevel logistic regression models. The findings indicate that individual characteristics such as ever use of condom, occupation, marital status influenced sexual behaviour of men compared to their contextual characteristics. Compared to men in the poorest group, moderately rich men were more likely to have multiple (OR=1.10, 95%CI=0.93-1.30) and non-regular sexual partners (OR=1.05, 95%CI=0.89-1.25). To promote safe and healthy sexuality among Nigerian men, behavioural intervention on sexual partnership targeting on individuals especially those in the middle class should be incorporated in the reproductive health policies.

High density of specialized health facilities hardly ensures service access to urban poor. Economic growth while important to help improve the health status of the urban poor does not necessarily solve the problem of reproductive health. In absence of social policies, equity and equality, the benefits are hardly reached to the urban poor. Hence, with the objective to assess the reproductive health condition in urban slums in Odisha, India the study findings of latest Annual Health Survey were reanalyzed. The findings of the reanalysis are currently married women aged 20-24 years married before legal age (18 years) was 27.3%. The birth orders two and above was found 33.9%. The unmet need for limiting was almost 13.4%. Mothers who had full ANC were only 28.9%. Most important the intake of IFA tablet was found 31.3% mothers. The institutional delivery was 56.0 %. The vital indicators like female IMR, U5MR and MMR were 48, 59 and 277 respectively. The recommendations suggested are health planning should be a part of city/town planning, strengthening and putting health equity higher on the agenda, need of improved access to maternal health services, referral, community participation, motivation of service care providers and corporate partnership, etc.

Purpose: To build-up the fundamental data for improving the level of maternal and child health care of Guatemala through assessment of current status of maternal and child (MCH) health care and characteristics related to the delivery services.
Method: Study subjects were the 450 women residents aged 15~50 living in Patzun region of Chimaltenango province, Guatemala.
Results: Mean age of the subjects was 32.5 years with residental area 51% urban and 49% rural. 81.1% of them ever heard about family planning, instead only 41.7% had experienced a practical contraception, and rural residents were more ignorant and conservative. As result of the MLR, the OR (95% CI) of the HO delivery was higher in case of the higher education level, delayed first delivery age, previously cognition about family planning group. However it was not related to the mother's age. HO delivery was more influenced by educational level and awareness of family planning in rural area, while by the first delivery age in urban area.
Conclusion: General cognitions and experiences about family planning were not enough, and the dependency and credits on TBA were still high. Hope to this study actively used as a useful resource to improve the comprehensive MCH environments, and especially, to induce the shift from TBA to HO deliveries in Guatemala.

Background: The environments of conservatism and cultural norms have hindered the formal introduction of sex education in school curricula in Nigeria because of negative impact sex education will create on youth.
Methods: This was a descriptive cross-sectional study using a multi-stage sampling technique.
Results: Mean age of the respondents was 37 ± 11 years; fifty seven percent were males while 43% were females. Seventy percent of the respondents were aware of sex education. There was poor understanding of the concept as only 38% could appropriately define sex education. Fifty seven percent of respondents rejected introduction of sex education for primary and secondary school pupils. There was statistically significant relationship between level of education of respondents and support for sex education.
Conclusion: Sex education is an ill-understood concept and opinions are divided on its introduction in schools among respondents.
Keywords: sex education, views, parents, Kaduna- Northern Nigeria

In Cameroon, the percentage of the use of condoms is greater for singles (73 %), against 51% for men from broken marriages and only 23% for married men. In the context of African country like Cameroon, the society generally advice the virtues of fidelity in the union and the domain of procreation. The obstacles to the use of condoms are more frequently inevitable among couples, whereby condoms usually appear in minds of individuals as a barrier to procreation and leads to sexual waywardness. Using data from the Demographic and Health Survey of Cameroon on the sample of the 1310 men “married conducted by the National Institute of Statistic, this paper used multiple logistic regression to estimate the effects of the determinents of the non-use of condoms and particularly with associated obstacles. The results showed that Factors of modernization interact with one’s culture, directly or indirectly, through one’s level of knowledge as far as condoms are concerned. Moreover, cultural characteristics influence the non-use of condoms. Finally, the effects of attitude and individual perception concerning condoms and the risks of contracting HIV over the non-use of condoms will be mediated by the geographic and economic accessibility of the latter.

Thousands of women who are in a certain age and want to marry are named remained women, or remained girls, in China, especially in modern cities such as Beijing and Shanghai. Their demographical characters, reasons and results of being unmarried are focused and explained by society. The author use the qualitative research method to locate some remained women and give a vivid description of them. Through the designed interaction between the researcher and these remained women, some general but secret reason of being unmarried could be found. The description and reason are quite different from the common sense. Only realizing themselves and the reasons could they get married. The reason is, to their surprise, related to the attitude and practice to sexuality.

Cancer has become a major cause of morbidity in developing countries like India. Cancer of the uterine cervix is one of the commonest malignancies seen in Indian women. Sexual behaviour is one of the issues related to development of cervical cancer. It would be worthwhile to estimate the absolute risk a women runs for getting CIN 3 in the presence of risk conditions. The present communication attempts to estimate the probability of women having a high grade of cervical neoplasia (CIN111) in the presence of certain risk conditions through the Bayesian approach. The data has been utilsed from the reports long term study conducted by ICMR.
The probability of women having a high grade cervical lesion in women more than 35 years would be 0.43. If a women is having parity of more than 2 the risk or probability would be around 0.35%. If a woman is married before 18 years she runs a risk of about 0.7% for the development of the disease under consideration her promiscuous behavior elevates this risk to 1.3%. The role of obstetric practices have also been considered.. Need in modification of sexual behaviour and advocacy for through RCH programs in developing countries is felt

Around 151 million cases of curable STIs are found in south and south-east Asia out of 340 million cases globally. India is home to the highest number of adolescents in the world who suffers from lack the knowledge and power they need to make informed sexual and reproductive health choices. The present paper tries to understand prevalence of reproductive tract infection and sexually transmitted infection (RTI/STI) and treatment seeking behavior among married adolescent women aged 15-19 years in India using District Level Household (DLHS, 2007-08) data. Around 15 percent of women reported to have any symptoms of RTI/STI. Main symptom reported by adolescent women is low backache, pain in the lower abdomen, pain during intercourse and itching or irritation over vulva. Factors analysis shows the concentration of diseases in three clusters - infection in around the vulva, other reproductive infection and abnormal discharge; and intercourse related problems. Major predictors of both symptoms of reproductive infections and treatment seeking behavior from multivariate analysis are age, education, wealth, region and awareness about RTI/STI. Awareness about the transmission of RTIs/STIs is low among adolescents. Hence, it is important to have proper knowledge about RTI/STI among adolescents.

This study examines the level and predictors of condom use among sexually active married women (15-49 years) in their last extramarital sex. The most recent standard DHS data for Congo Brazzaville, Ghana, Malawi and Namibia are analysed. Results indicate that condom use in extramarital sex in the sample ranges between 6.4% (Ghana) and 26.6% (Namibia). Predictors of using condom in extramarital sex include higher wealth quintile, husband living with wives, employment, tested for HIV/AIDs, knowledge of condom usage reducing risk of HIV, higher years of schooling and age at first marriage (odds ratios range from 1.04 to 6.57, P<0.01/0.05). However, older women and those in female headed households are less likely to report condom use during extramarital sex. Elevating socioeconomic status of women is an imperative and sexual health educators should focus on older women and those in female headed households on the importance of using condom during extramarital intercourse.

Infertility in many South-East-Asian countries, has been relatively a neglected field of social science research as these countries still focus on high fertility and its control and not on the dynamics of infertility. Data from various countries have shown that infertility is affecting a large number of couples even in the highly fertile India. On the contrary, this paper shows that the infertility in India is relatively low although the levels have increased over the years. A regional variation in infertility has also been observed wherein the Southern Regions exhibited higher levels of infertility over that of the other. A logistic regression run has shown that the infertility in India is mainly determined by biological and life-style related factors rather than by the socio-economic factors. Infertility also affects the quality and well-being of women’s life adversely by having greater marital instability, higher exposure to domestic violence and by lowered autonomy.