Physical violence and some reproductive health variables among currently married Egyptian women

Type Journal Article - The Journal of the Egyptian Public Health Association
Title Physical violence and some reproductive health variables among currently married Egyptian women
Author(s)
Volume 83
Issue 1-2
Publication (Day/Month/Year) 2008
Page numbers 49
URL http://www.epha.eg.net/pdf/0013-2446 v83 n1,2 2008/HQ2009-21960.pdf
Abstract
This study investigates the relationship between women exposure to marital physical violence and some reproductive health variables including the number of ANC visits during the last pregnancy, intended pregnancy, reporting of STDs symptoms and visiting governmental health facility in the past 6 months prior to the survey. The study was conducted on the EDHS, 2005 data. A sub-sample of 5249 currently- married women were investigated for both ever and the 12 months prior to survey exposure to physical violence by their current husbands, and its association with ithe aforementioned variables adjusting for the effect of respondents' age, education, work, residence, wealth index, number of children ever borne, and empowerment in household decisions. Around 29.4% of the studied women have been ever exposed to physical violence by their current husbands; of them 60% have been subjected to it in the 12 months prior to the survey. Logistic regression models showed that exposure to physical violence predicted lower number of ANC visits, unintended pregnancy, reporting of STDs symptoms, and utilization of governmental health facility in the past 6 months prior to the survey. The relationship between exposure
to physical violence and poor reproductive health outcomes was strong to hold, adjusting for other covariates. The increased likelihood of visitfing governmental health facilities by physically abused wives supports jthe recommendation to use public health services as entry point for management of violence against women (VAVY), and to develop a comprehensive health sector response to various impacts of VAW.

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