Knowledge of Sexually Transmitted Disease and Barriers to Seeking Sexual and Reproductive Health Care among Chercher High School Students

Insufficient knowledge about Sexually Transmitted Infections and issues around sexual and reproductive health services are among the major barriers to successfully prevent the disease among adolescent populations in the world. The objective of the study was to assess knowledge of adolescents about STIs and identify the barriers to seek sexual and reproductive health service among Chercher high school regular students in west Hararge zone Oromiya region from February-March 2014. Institutional based cross sectional study design was used. A simple random sampling procedure was used to randomly select students across the sections. Data were collected using a pre tested self-administered questionnaire. Odds ratio with 95% CI was employed to test the association between variables and multiple logistic regressions was used to control for the possible confounders. Only (17.5%) of the participants were knowledgeable. Respondents who aged 10-14 were 61% less likely to be knowledgeable (AOR=0.39, 95% CI=0.17-0.91). Students whose fathers were either merchant or NGO employer were about 78% less likely to have knowledge [AOR=0.22, 95% CI 0.10-0.51]. Knowledge about sexually transmitted disease was very low. Therefore strengthening of information, education and communication on the issue was recommended.