KNOWLEDGE AND ATTITUDE

Abstract

Reproductive health is concerned with the people’s ability to have a satisfyingand safe sex life ensuring their capability to reproduce with a liberty of making a decision that if,when and how often they have to do so. In Pakistan, culturally females are married at a youngage; become mothers and are at risk of health complications i.e. HIV/ STD and STI. There isless utilization of reproductive health services throughout Pakistan that ultimately affects healthstatus of people at very young age. Most of the communities are not aware of reproductivehealth services, thus not availing these facilities. Objective: So the present study was designedto examine the females perceptions, attitude and practices about reproductive health servicesas well as to determine the level of their empowerment to take decisions and make choicesregarding their own reproductive health besides determining the level of the quality, availabilityand accessibility of reproductive health services and to suggest some measures for policymakers to improve the reproductive health state of young mothers in district Faisalabad. StudyDesign: A sample of 600 young married females of age 15-32 years was selected throughmultistage sampling technique. Period: 2009. Setting: Rural and urban area of DistrictFaisalabad. Material and Method: Uni-variate (frequency distribution and percentage) and Bivariateanalysis (Chi square and Gamma Statistics) was carried out. Results: Most (44.0%) ofthe respondents belonged to age category of 26-30 years; 35.5% were married for 18 years;39.3% had been married for 5 years; 71.8% had primary and above level of education. Majority(65.9%) had up to Rs.10,000 per month income, 49.2% possessed 6-10 family members,73.5% had at least 2 and above live children. Majority had the knowledge of reproductive health(67.7%) and HIV/AIDs (54.7%) whereas most of females had no knowledge of STIs (69.8%),RTIs (52.3%) and its development (51.8%). Most of the females experienced headache (62.8%),swelling of different body parts (61%) and back pain (62.7%) during their reproductive life. Bivariateanalysis showed highly significant relation among age at marriage, number of children,cultural hindrance and age of respondents vs. their reproductive health. Conclusion: Althoughmost of the females were young & educated mothers with good reproductive health experiencebut still lacking in knowledge about STIs, HIV/AIDS, RTIs and breast cancer that is because ofcultural hindrance, early age marriage pattern and male dominancy which indicates that weneed to pay more attention towards female education and empowerment and decision makingauthority status at domestic level through community mobilization with the help of NGOs,Religious scholars and existing health system/ Health personnel’s .i.e. doctors/ nurses /LHV/FHW.