Hailemariam Shewangizaw
Mizan-Tepi University, Ethiopia
Posters & Accepted Abstracts: Prim Health Care
Background: Female sex workers constitute one of the high-risk groups for sexually transmitted infections (STI) and Human Immunodeficiency Virus acquisition and transmission. In many societies female sex workers face stigmatization, marginalization and discrimination, including in the health-care sector due to this fact great majority of female sex workers tend to self-diagnose and seek over-the-counter medication from pharmacies or use traditional home remedies for sexually transmitted infections treatment rather than visit health institution. Hence, assessing the factors that hinder or facilitate sexually transmitted infections care seeking behavior in this population group is imperative. Objective: The objective of this study is to assess sexual transmitted care seeking behavior and associated factors among female sex working in licensed drinking establishment of Adama town, Oromia regional state, Ethiopia 2017. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted from March 01/2017 to 30/2017 among 423 female sex workers selected by the means of �quota� sampling approach. Interviewer administered standardized tool was used to collect data. The collected data were entered using EPI data version 3.1 and exported to SPSS version 20 for analysis. A final backward conditional multivariate logistic regression analysis was carried out to identify factors associated with sexually transmitted infections care seeking behavior. Result: Among 423 female sex workers 390 were responded to the interviewer administered structured questionnaires making response rate of 92.2%. Among the respondents 218 (55.9%) have utilized sexual transmitted infections care services. Among users of the services 80(20.5%) have utilized the service of treatment purpose, 69(17.7%) for screening purpose the rest visited for condom receiving and consultation service 32(8.2%), 36(9.2%) respectively. Majority of respondents perceived a high level of perceive susceptibility, perceive severity, perceive benefit, perceive barrier and cue to action. In the final multivariate binary logistic regression model three constructs of the health belief model namely perceive susceptibility (AOR=2.330, P-value=0.022), perceive severity (AOR=3.257, P-value=0.001) and cue to action (AOR=2.821, P-value=0.002) were significantly associated with sexually transmitted infections care seeking behavior. Furthermore, knowledge of sexual transmitted infection (AOR=5.364, P-value<0.001), having symptoms of sexual transmitted infection (AOR=3.953, P-value<0.001), having nonpaying sexual partner (AOR=1.956, P-value=0.023) and duration of sex work (AOR=0.5, P-value=0.013) were among the modifying variables that show significant association. Conclusions: The result of this research reveals that 3 components of the health belief model namely perceived susceptibility and perceived severity and cue to action were significantly associated with sexual transmitted infection care seeking behavior. Among the modifying factors having sexual transmitted infection symptoms, knowledge of sexual transmitted infection, duration of sex work and having non-paying sexual partners were found to be strong predictors of sexually transmitted infection care seeking behavior among the female sex workers.
