Awareness and Attitude towards Reproductive Health among Female Population in Bangladesh

Abstract

Reproductive health is a major concern for the development of youth generation. Ensuring a better reproductive health is a basic right for the young generation. It is a big challenge for many under developed and developing country to protect the young people’s reproductive health especially the female. Lack of information, education and knowledge are great hindrance to this. In Bangladesh the knowledge level among the adolescent girls about female reproductive health is not so good especially in slum area. The objective of the study was to assess the awareness and attitude of female towards their reproductive health in our country. A total of 259 females aged between 16 to 23 years age, both from non slum and slum area participated in the study representing the young generation of the nation. They responded to a structured questionnaires and having heard of the disease in question was defined as ‘awareness’ and having some opinions and understandings of some reproductive health issue was defined as ‘knowledge’. The knowledge about the legal age of marriage for female across the entire population was (71.43%). More or less the respondents heard about some sexually transmitted diseases but mostly (62.16%) heard about HIV. The respondents were knowledgeable about different ways for prevention of sexually transmitted disease but (57.92%) commonly known about condom. Only 39% female have the knowledge of identifying the fertility period. About 78% had no idea about inadequate gap between pregnancies and only 15% had their conception correct. The knowledge among the method of contraception was highest for oral contraceptive pills (65.25%) and the second commonly known method was using condom (44.02%). The knowledge about the infertility caused by contraceptive pills was 54% among the respondents. From the result it was seen that the knowledge of the reproductive health was not at satisfactory level among the young generation of the country. Such awareness and knowledge could lead to better understanding and acceptance of the importance of the reproductive health and help to flourish the female sector of the society.