Sexuality and reproductive health

In many parts of the world, the sexual behaviours of Adolescents and youth are rapidly changing, the opening of border to new influences, migration, and changing traditions. The nature of sexual behaviour of adolescents and youth now places them at a high risk for unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections including HIV. The objective of this paper is to assess knowledge attitude and practices of sexuality among Nepalese adolescents and youths. Data for this analysis will be derived from the Nepal Adolescents and Youth Survey, 2010/11. The data is collected from personal interviews with a nationally representative probabilistic 14753 sample of 10-24 ages’ adolescents and youth. Exploratory data analysis will used to investigate various associations, structures and trends/patterns of the datasets. Series of graphical techniques will be made use of in order to carry such investigations. Model building process will be processed, by considering the complexities in the dataset. Gaussion/non-Gaussian setting will be applied to get best explain of knowledge, attitude and practices of sexuality among Nepalese adolescents and youth. The great value of this paper is application of various statistical models (Gaussian / non-Gaussian) on sexuality. Key words: Adolescents and Youth, Gaussian,

Objectives: The study examined the correlates of antisocial behaviour among young people in Ibadan South East local government, Oyo state.
Methods: Primary data was utilized and obtained through questionnaire from secondary school students aged 13-20 years in Ibadan South East Local Government, Ibadan. The study employed samples of 420 respondents. The analysis was done in three stages of univariate, bivariate and multivariate levels.
Results: The results showed that respondents aged above 16 years and residing less than 5 years in place of residence exhibited higher antisocial behaviours. The male sex engages more in substance use, violence and premarital sex and rape as forms of antisocial behaviour than their female counterparts who predominantly report violence and group affiliation. Place of residence, duration of residence, family type and family dissolution were the most important variables explaining the differentials in antisocial behaviour among the male and female sex.
Conclusion: Significant antisocial behaviours occur in this region with sex differentials worse in males

Attitude of today’s youth is changing from romantic relationship to casual sex. West influenced societal norms & liberal sexual culture in metros offers varied avenues for sexual experiences adding opportunity for sexual liaisons. Findings derive from study in slum of Mumbai with randomized cluster sample of 1239 men age 18-29 using in-depth interviews and survey. Results show, 80% of romantic relationships are translated in sex. 10% of respondents reported multi-partner behavior in last one year and 1/5th of respondents reported their “girlfriend” as married. Study reveals that peer network, self assessment as sexual partner and perceived relational satisfaction with girlfriend are significantly affecting the safe sexual behavior and coercive sex. The multi-partner behavior is affecting condom use negative whereas is catalyzing alcohol use and also coercive sex. Findings facilitate understanding of changing sexual culture & behaviors and highlights need to fully informed and equipped youth to make safe choices.

More than one-third of Nepal’s populationis still young. In Nepal, 23.62% of the population is categorized as adolescents (10-19 years), 19.98% as youth (15-24 years) and 32.49% as young people (10-24 years) (CBS, 2002).Early marriages, which are sill prevalent in Nepal, cause young females to conceive at a very early age. But, due to lack of reproductive health services, young females do not get the required health care and suffer from weak health conditions. Moreover, if a young unmarried female happens to conceive, then the young female may opt to abort the child due to societal, cultural and religious reasons. In both scenarios, lack of reproductive health services negativelyimpacts young females.

This paper aims to identify age patterns of young female’s first marriage and motherhood, and to report how accessible reproductive health services are to young people. The data source is Nepal Adolescent and Youth Survey-2010 and 2011 Nepal Demographic and Health Survey.Thus, early marriage, early child and illegal child are already serious problems in Nepal. And now, in addition, there is insufficient access to reproductive health services, which has also become a major problem in Nepal.

This paper aims at analyzing communication pattern regarding decision-making process and men’s engagement in women’s reproductive health. The paper utilizes mixed method approach: quantitative data from NFHS-3 (2005-06) and qualitative data from women and men (20 each) collected from two villages of the Gautam Buddha Nagar District, Uttar Pradesh in 2011. Multinomial and logistic regression techniques are applied to analyze quantitative data in order to assess level of agreement between spouses regarding their reproductive behavior; however, the pattern of effective communication is understood by analyzing interviews. Findings from quantitative analysis suggest that urban couples have more agreement and less desire to have additional child. While qualitative analysis reveals that lack of inter-spousal communication is a consequence of individual and collective factors. Older rural couples are hesitant to discuss issues regarding reproductive behavior. Moreover, the young rural couples who are influenced by urbanization have greater agreement for contraceptive use and are less hesitant to discuss their desires on the family size. Hence communication pattern is influenced by urbanization and changes in individual’s perceptions that have a bearing on cultural norms and acceptable behavior of men and women in a society.

A K Mathur*, RS Sharma and B K Singh
Background : RTI/STI are major public health concern amongst women especially in SEAR countries . Majority of women think menstrual problem and vaginal discharge as a part of their normal life and thus continue to suffer silently. Hence it is difficult to estimate the burden of RTI from clinic records and therefore data is extracted from ICMR community based study done in rural parts of the country. Multi level cluster sampling techniques was adopted and ever married women aged 15-45 years was taken as sampling unit.
Methods: Information with regards to characteristics of vaginal discharge, education level ,occupation etc was elicited from every sampled women .Also both the diagnosis made by ANM and medical doctor was recorded and compared.
Results : Out of 5567 of the sampled women ,16 per cent of the women were clinically diagnosed of RTIs that too belonging to low risk population and from villages. The results of logistic regression concluded that MTP, use of OC, high risk sexual behavior, and husband infected with urethral discharge may increase the probability of a women for contracting STIs.
Conclusion: The result demonstrating the association should not decrease the acceptance of IUD, OC but should be interpreted carefully.

The antenatal care is one of the most important components of maternal health care to ensure safe motherhood. An attempt has been made in this paper to examine the utilization pattern of ANC, its motivational factors and barriers in eight EAG states of India. This study utilizes data from District Level Household and Facility Survey, 2007-2008 for eight high focused states- empowered action group (EAG) states. The utilization of ANC service varies from state to state and among socio-economic groups. The proportion of women dropped out before full ANC is highest in Uttar Pradesh among all EAG states. More dropouts are occurring in first and second trimester and after two or three ANC visits. The major source of motivation for ANC is 'self or any family member' rather than ‘any health personnel’. Cultural barriers, like- 'not necessary', not customary', and 'family didn’t allow' are major obstacles of ANC utilization. Therefore, it becomes essential to spread the proper knowledge of ANC and its importance among the women and husbands or family members as well as health personnel can act as the key person to motivate the women to go for ANC and complete the full schedule of ANC.

The research focused on establishing the obstacles to proper reproductive and maternal health in Uganda. Uganda. The study aimed at providing a clear basis for policy measures so as to reduce or curb down the high and rapidly growing child and maternal mortality rates in the country. The study used secondary data from the 2002 AYA baseline survey by Makerere University in collaboration with the Program for Appropriate a Technology for Health (PATH), Pathfinders International and UNFPA and the UDHS data sets, 2002 and 2006. The researcher used both univariate and bivariate analysis. In bivariate analysis Correlations and Chi square test was also used to measure the degree of association between the dependant variable and the independent variables.
The results show that 40% of the women don’t receive antenatal care from government hospitals and only 16% Receive antenatal care from these hospitals. Health care from government health care centers was not received by 28% and 29% of them did receive the services from these hospitals. 2% of the women were reported to having received antenatal care from Traditional birth attendants. Postpartum care is an important exercise a mother and child should go through after giving birth for proper and better health. Unfortunately 73.9% of the women in Uganda r

With increasing incidences of infertility, the surrogate mothers are considered as an alternative which enables childless couples to have a child of their own with the help of Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs). Commercial surrogacy has evolved as the most lucrative and unregulated ‘industry’ in India and every actor involved plays its role in a clandestine manner. Though legal, there are no laws governing it in India attracting even large number of foreign customers. Based on a field study in Kolkata city in 2012, it was found that though surrogacy is termed as a ‘generous and kind act’, doctors, agents and surrogate women are earning quick money, despite many health hazards. In a country like India, with high maternal death rate and low status of women, this raises many questions on unethical medical practices and human rights violations of poor illiterate women who choose to be surrogate mothers only for monetary gains.

This paper asks whether children conceived during heat waves have better health and educational outcomes later in life. Using Census data from 16 countries, we show that children conceived during heat waves have higher literacy rates, attain more years of schooling, and have lower rates of disability than children conceived during periods of normal temperatures. We also show, using a combined AIS, DHS, and MIS data set from Africa, that infant mortality is lower for children conceived during heat waves. We then explore several channels through which this effect may occur, including differential reductions in sexual activity during heat waves among higher quality parents; biological effects of heat on conception and spontaneous abortion in utero; and changes in the proportion of unintended pregnancies during heat waves, among others.