Reproductive Tract Infections and Treatment Seeking Behavior among Married Adolescent Women 15-19 Years in India

Introduction

Owing largely to early marriage, adolescent women in India become sexually active at an early age and face tremendous social and familial pressure for child bearing soon after marriage, a situation that leads to multiple reproductive health problems^[1]. Many of them lack knowledge about proper use of family planning methods and safe abortions. The improper use of contraception, intrauterine devices (IUD) insertion in the presence of infections, female sterilization in unsterile condition, and unsafe abortion also increases the risks of RTIs^[2-4]. These infections are often asymptomatic, or the symptoms are not recognizable. Therefore, RTIs are generally seen as a ‘silent’ epidemic and are among the leading public health problems significantly contributing to gynecological morbidity and maternal mortality in India and other developing countries^[5]. Moreover, in India, women with self-reported symptoms of reproductive morbidity do not seek treatment due to existing taboos and inhibitions regarding sexual and reproductive health. They hesitate to discuss their reproductive health problems especially, due to shame and embarrassment^[6-7].

Untreated infections are among the underlying causes of Pelvic Inflammatory Diseases (PID),ectopic pregnancy, infertility, cervical cancer, fetal loss, health problems of new born, and increased risk of HIV transmission. In addition to health consequences, women experience social consequences in terms of emotional distress related to gynecological morbidity^[8]. As most of these illnesses progresses to a chronic state and remain with women for the rest of their lives, the importance of early detection and management becomes much more evident.

The prevalence of RTI infections is low in India^[9]; however, the number of adolescent affected by infections is a real concern due to the large adolescent population. India has the largest proportion of adolescents (more than 243 million) in the world, accounting for almost 20 per cent of the country's population.^[10] Around 340 million incidences of curable STIs are diagnosed each year, out of which 151 million are from South and Southeast Asia^[11]. Furthermore, two third of all STIs occur among young and adolescent people who are in their early twenties^[12].

Until now, very few studies have focused on reproductive tract infections (RTI) or sexually transmitted diseases (STIs) among adolescent women in developing countries such as India. A study conducted in southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu on young married women aged 16-22 years in a rural community reported a very high level of morbidity^[14]. The study showed that more than half of the women were suffering from at least one or more RTIs^[14]. Similarly, very few attempts have been made to study the health seeking behavior for reproductive morbidity of adolescent women in India^[1,13-14]. One of the studies explained the familial influence in treatment seeking behavior of married adolescents in Maharashtra, a western state of India^[1]. However, most of the studies are micro-level data collected from districts or regions. Therefore, the present study focuses on knowledge and prevalence of reproductive tract infection among married adolescent women using a national level large scale data with a special attention on different categories of infection and treatment seeking behavior. More importantly, this study attempts to group the symptoms by factor analysis and to examine the factors associated with symptomatic clusters.

Methods

The study uses data from third round of the India District Level Household Survey (DLHS)^[15], which provides district level information about reproductive and health care of women aged 15-49. The survey was conducted during December 2007 to December 2008. The survey used multistage stratified systematic sampling design and 50 census villages in rural areas and wards from urban areas were selected from each district based on probability proportional size (PPS) sampling^[15]. In this paper, ever married women aged 15-19 consisting of 39,164 are considered. Although this age group does not cover the complete gamut of adolescents, this age-group is more suitable for examining the prevalence of RTI and knowledge as most of the adolescents get married and starts active sexual life at this age.

Multiple statistical techniques are used for analysis. Factor analysis was used to create an index using all the 11 symptoms of RTI/STI reported in the survey. Factor analysis is generally used for the determination of a small number of factors based on a particular number of inter-related quantitative variables. Cross tabulation were used to explore the prevalence of RTIs symptoms and treatment seeking behavior among women by different socio-demographic, medical and behavioral characteristics. In this study, we tried to find statistical association between different type of symptoms of RTI/STI among adolescents married women in India and reduced the numbers of factors using principal component analysis method of factor analysis. Simple linear regression was used to know the relation between different types of infections and socio-demographic medical and behavioral characteristics. The explanatory variables are: religion, caste, educational levels, type of house, age of women, age at marriage, abortion, children ever born, contraceptive users, aware of RTI/STI. In order to estimate the net effect of each variable on the probability of seeking treatment or consultation, binary logistic regression model was used.

Results

Discussion

In this study, we highlight the state of knowledge, prevalence and treatment seeking behavior among married adolescents in India. Awareness of RTIs/ STIs among married is very low in India and level of knowledge of RTI is even lower than in other developing countries including many African countries^[16-17]. Only one-fourth of the adolescent married women of are aware about any mode of transmission considered in the study and this is little higher among the older women. Due to low education and low age at marriage adolescent women are mostly not accustomed to RTIs. Many studies in south-east Asia had also reported low understanding of RTI/STIs among women. For instance, a study in rural Bangladesh reported that only 12% of the study population had the basic understanding of RTIs^[18]. The study explained this great disparity in the proportion of the various populations who were aware of RTIs could be explained from the rural nature of India and Bangladesh where most of the respondents were illiterates, when compared to the urban settings of Nigeria and Kenya where the literacy level is higher^[16]. However, we found that only 31 percent of the urban adolescent women in India are aware of any RTIs'/STIs' symptoms.

We found around 15% of adolescents have any symptoms of reproductive tract infections. Earlier studies on South Asia found the prevalence of reproductive varies in between 22-92%^[3,6,19-21]. However, most of these studies included all three types of reproductive morbidities including gynecological morbidities. Most of these infections stayed for more than three months. The factor analysis shows the concentration of diseases in three clusters -infection in around the vulva, other reproductive infection and abnormal discharge; and intercourse-related problems. Multivariate results show that the use of modern contraception and abortion were significantly associated with both infection in around the vulva and other reproductive infection and abnormal discharge. This corroborates the findings from prior studies^[2-4].

The treatment seeking for any RTI/STI infections is found to be low in our study. Three-fifths of women discuss RTIs with their husbands/partner but only a little more than one-fourth of them prefers going to seek treatment. This finding is consistent with some of the earlier studies in India which accentuates that the country's health programs which has been special importance to adolescents and youths has failed to reach them^[13,22-23]. Our multivariate results shows younger adolescents, rural and poor women are less likely to seek treatment than older urban and rich adolescent women respectively. With respect to geography, women from northern region and north-eastern women have less probability to seek treatment than their southern counterparts. Those who are not aware of RTI/STI symptoms are less likely to seek treatment. Thus, here is need to focus on rural and poor adolescents with a special focus on strengthening their knowledge about RTI/STI infections.

Conclusion

The result of this study shows that awareness of life threatening reproductive infections still remains low despite several government efforts in Reproductive and Child health (RCH) programs and the current national rural health mission (NRHM). The awareness remains dismal among adolescent women who have very low knowledge of these infections. Not many of the women are aware that RTIs/STIs can be transmitted through unsafe delivery, unsafe abortion or IUD insertion in the presence of infections. The study found although the prevalence is not very high many of the women ignore these infections for long duration. There exists a strong association between the morbidities which was confirmed by factor analysis.

Furthermore, the number of unqualified and illegal private medical practitioners practicing allopathic medicine and doing abortions has remained the priority among people in the rural areas and small towns of India. People willingly pay for their services rather than availing themselves of free services at the government health facilities. Women rarely use the government health centers than private ones. This underutilization has been described in many other studies.^[24-26]