UTILIZATION OF YOUTH FRIENDLY REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH SERVICES AMONG THE YOUTH BURETI SUB COUNTY IN KENYA
*Nancy. U. Luvai, Mary Kipmerewo and Kennedy. O. Onyango
ABSTRACT
Worldwide, 18 percent of young girls become pregnant yearly with over 85 percent undergoing unsafe abortions. Among Top five complications that cause high maternal mortality, unsafe abortion account for 6 percent. The main objective of the study was to assess utilization of youth friendly reproductive health services in Bureti Sub County, Kericho County. A total of 423 respondents were involved in the study. The design was descriptive cross-sectional and sampling techniques included Stratified sampling and simple random sampling to select schools/colleges and Systematic random sampling technique used to select respondents. Independent variables included Demographic factors, awareness and Health system factors while Dependent variable was Utilization of youth friendly reproductive health services. Data was collected using questionnaires and analyzed with statistical package for social services (SPSS).Odds ratio used to determine association. Confidence interval was set at 95%. Feedback from the study helped to improve reproductive health status of the youth. Majority of the respondents were females (61 %) with an average mean age (16.96) and age range of (16) years. Most respondents were in secondary school (47%). Over 60% of the respondents had knowledge on youth friendly reproductive health services though majority knew through friends (56.1%). Findings further indicated that most respondents had never utilized the services (61.5%). Inferential statistics with a value less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Findings showed that Variables that demonstrated a significant association with utilization of YFRHS were; Age (P;0.008,OR;1.73,CI;1.15-2.58), Religion(P;0.01,OR;0.39,CI;0.19-0.82). Knowledge and utilization also showed significant association for those who heard of the services and knew where services were(P;0.001,OR;0.33,CI;0.29-0.38, P;0.001,OR;0.26,CI;0.22-0.31) respectively. Health system factors also showed a significant association with utilization where some found the queue long while others found clinic closed (P;0.001,OR;0.35,CI;0.23-0.53,P;0.001,OR;2.19,CI;1.44-3.33) respectively. From the findings, there is a relationship between demographic factors, knowledge, health system factors and utilization of YFRHS. The null hypothesis was therefore rejected and an Alternative hypothesis adopted. There should be active sensitization of the youth, train peer educators and offer outreach services to strengthen utilization of youth friendly reproductive health services.
Keywords: Reproductive health, Youth Friendly, Utilization, Health Care, Youth, Determinants of Health.
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