Reproductive Health Morbidities among Adolescent Girls: Breaking the Silence!

Abstract

Present study was undertaken to find out prevalence of reproductive health morbidities among unmarried adolescent girls and to study the health care seeking behaviour during period of reproductive illness. A cross-sectional community based study was carried out in an urban slum field practice area under Urban Health Training Centre, Dept. of Community Medicine, NKP Salve Institute of Medical Science, Nagpur from June 2009 to February 2010. Out of five slum areas under field practice area, one area was selected by simple random sampling. The population of the selected area was 3000. All unmarried, nonpregnant, non-lactating adolescent girls (10 to 19 years) with attainment of menarche at least one year prior to the study were included in the study (n=224).Information regarding reproductive morbidities was collected in pre-designed and pre-tested proforma. Statistical analysis was done by epiinfo statistical software. Out of total 224 girls, 146(65.18%) girls were having one or more reproductive morbidity. A high prevalence of dysmenorrhoea (53.6%) was reported among adolescent girls. Backache was found to be a second common morbidity. A highly significant statistical association was found between age of girl and dysmenorrhoea. A highly significant statistical association was found between education of girl and reproductive morbidity .Out of 146 girls with reproductive morbidities, only 55(33.67%) girls sought heath care and 91(62.33%) girls remained silent without seeking health care. Out of 91 girls who did not seek health care 88(96.70%) girls reported ‘no need of treatment’ as a reason for not seeking health care. A high prevalence of reproductive morbidities was found among adolescent girls but heath care seeking behaviour was found to be very low.