PREVENTIVE PRACTICES AGAINST SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED INFECTIONS AND ITS ASSOCIATED FACTORS AMONG REGULAR UNDERGRADUATE MADAWALABU UNIVERSITY STUDENTS, SOUTH EAST ETHIOPIA.

Abstract

Background: Sexually transmitted infections are among the most common infections in the world and therefore a major public health problem as they cause devastating long term consequences if untreated, especially in adolescents and youths. Sexually transmitted infection preventive measures, if correctly and consistently used, have been proven to be efficacious. Despite substantial risk sexual practices among University students in Ethiopia, only few studies considered preventive practice against sexually transmitted infections. Objective: Toassess Preventive Practices against Sexually Transmitted Infections and its associated factors among regular undergraduate Madawalabu University Students, South east Ethiopia. Methods and Materials: An Institution based cross-sectional study was conducted on undergraduate students of Madawalabu University from February to March, 2017. Multi-stage sampling technique was used to select study subjects. Pre-tested self administered questionnaire were used for data collection. Data were entered and cleaned using EPI-data version 3.02 and analyzed by SPSS version 20.0. Odds ratio with 95% confidence interval was used to identify factors associated with preventive practices. Result: In this study, 928 undergraduate students were enrolled with response rate of 98.6%. About 245 (58.6 %) of them were males and the participants mean age were 22.04(±3.25SD) years. About 53.1% of respondents practice for preventive measures in which the highest, (45.5%) was being faithful followed by consistent condom use (39.2%) and the least (15.5%) was abstinence. Female students showed lower odds for preventive practice than male students (AOR= 0.93, 95% CI: 0.71-0.98) and students who do not have regular partner also had lower odds to practice preventive measures (AOR= 0.01, 95% CI: 0.01-0.02) against sexually transmitted infections compared to their counter parts. Conclusions: Half of this study subjects practice preventive measures against sexually transmitted infections. Female students and students who do not have regular sexual partner had lower odds for preventive measures practice. Recommendations: The University should provide training for students and teachers and also avail necessary services including condom supply to reduce unprotected sex. The stakeholders should strengthen youth friendly service in health institutions and schools and further research has to be done to identify more predictors of preventive practice.