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.
