Physical intimate partner violence in Chile, Egypt, India and the Philippines.

Background: Violence against women is recognized by globally as a serious health and social problem that impedes development.

Objectives: To determine the magnitude of physical intimate partner violence against women in six selected communities from Chile, Egypt, India and the Philippines.

Design: Population-based household surveys.

Settings: Selected urban communities in Temuco, Chile; Ismailia, Egypt; Lucknow, Trivandrum, and Vellore non-slum areas of India; and in Manila, the Philippines.

Participants: Women aged 15-49 years who cared for at least one child younger than 18 years old. The number of participants per community was 442 (Santa Rosa, Chile), 631 (El-Sheik Zayed, Egypt), 506 (Lucknow, India), 700 (Trivandrum, India), 716 (Vellore, India) and 1000 (Paco, the Philippines).

Main outcome measures: Lifetime and Current physical intimate partner violence (IPV) was measured using standard definitions and four behaviors of actions--namely slap, hit, kick and beat. Three derived variables for severity included: disabling IPV, IPV-related injury requiring health care and multiple severe IPV (presence of hit and kick and beat).

Results: Percentages of lifetime and current physical intimate partner violence (IPV) against women in our sample of 3975 were as follows: 24.9 and 3.6 (Santa Rosa), 11.1 and 10.5 (El-Sheik Zayed), 34.6 and 25.3 (Lucknow), 43.1 and 19.6 (Trivandrum) 31.0 and 16.2 (Vellore), and 21.2 and 6.2 (Paco). Multiple severe physical IPV was more common in the three communities within India (9.0%, 5.9% and 8.0% in Trivandrum, Lucknow and Vellore) than the other three communities (Santa Rosa 2.1%; El-Sheik Zayed 2.9% and Paco 1.9%).

Conclusions: Physical IPV was found to be a common phenomenon in all six communities. Overall, patterns of IPV behaviors were similar among the six communities.