Knowledge, Attitude and Practice on UnsafeAbortion among Female Students in Batu TeraraPreparatory School Goba Town, SoutheastEthiopia

Abstract

Background: Globally, unsafe abortion is a public health problem, which accounts approximately 20 million each year, resulting nearly 80,000 maternal deaths and hundreds of disabilities and the problem is more severe in developing countries. In Africa the risks of dying from unsafe abortion is one in hundred fifty, and unsafe abortion accounts for up to 25-35% of maternal deaths in Ethiopia being a critical public health problem with possible complication like hemorrhage, sepsis, incomplete abortion and damage to internal organs. Objective: The aim of the study wasto assess knowledge, attitude and practice of unsafe abortion among female students in Batu Terara Preparatory school, Goba town in April, 2013. Methodology: Aschool based descriptive cross sectional study were conducted to assess knowledge, attitude and practice of female students in Batu Terara preparatory school Goba town on unsafe abortion in April, 2013. The data were collected by using self-administer closed ended structural questionnaires and systematic sampling technique. The data were processed using SPSS version 16. Results: Out of 182 respondents 108(59.34%) were knowledgeable 85(47.5%) of them had good attitude, in addition to this 22(12.08%) were experienced abortion of which 19(16.48%) were faced bleeding. Conclusion and recommendation: Majority of the respondents’ who practiced induce abortion 16(8.8%) were under 20 years of age and of those who induce abortion, most 15.9% were by traditional healer and themselves, so health professionals should give health education at school and community level.