Reproductive System & Sexual Disorders: Current Research
Open Access
ISSN: 2161-038X
ISSN: 2161-038X
Minet Tesfai Hadish
Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China
Posters & Accepted Abstracts: Reprod Syst Sex Disord
Background: Cameroon and Gabon are the most highly HIV/AIDS prevalent West African countries with unwavering HIV epidemic. The spread of HIV, among youth, in Gabon and Cameroon is believed to be driven by unsafe heterosexual intercourse. However, no research has been done to investigate the predicting factors of risk sexual behaviors among youth of the two countries. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the predicting factors of high risk sexual behavior among 15-24 aged Cameroonian and Gabonese youth. Methods: This study used nationally representative datasets from Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) of Cameroon (2011) and Gabon (2012). A total of 14,880 youth, of which 9511(63.91%) from Cameroon and 5369(36.08%) from Gabon were taken. SPSS version 22 was used to run binary logistic regression was used for multivariate analysis to examine the predicting factors. Odds ratio and 95 percent confidence interval were used to observe the associations by taking p-values less than 0.05 as significant. Result: Of all the respondents, 6456(67.9%) of Cameroonian and 4349(81.0%) of Gabonese youth had history of sexual intercourse. Despite the difference by gender, 985(17.4%) of Cameroonian and 839(21.3%) of Gabonese youth had multiple sexual partners as well as 33.9% of Cameroonian and 57.3% Gabonese youth reported non-spousal sex. On multivariate analysis, age, place of residence, educational level, religion, marital status, wealth index, occupation, comprehensive knowledge and attitude of respondents were found to be significant associates of most of the risk sexual behavior variables. When compared by country, Gabonese youth were more likely to have high risk sexual behavior than Cameroonian youth. Comparing by gender, Cameroonian and Gabonese males were more likely to have higher risk sexual behaviors than females. Conclusion: In this study, the level of risk sexual behaviors among youth was high. So, designing risk sexual behavior focused health education is crucial to address the different needs of males and females. It is also very important to investigate the protecting, HIV testing and health care seeking behavior of youth to tackle the HIV epidemic.
Email: minettesfay@yahoo.com