Males’ involvement in fertility treatment in Ejisu Municipality in the Ashanti Region of Ghana

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Date
September, 2019
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Abstract
Background Infertility is a global challenge confronting couples and even partners in consensual unions. Efforts to address the phenomena has largely focused on females to the neglect of men who ought to be equally brought on board as key players. Therefore, there is a need for empirical evidence on the determinant of male involvement in fertility treatment. Methods The study adopted a quantitative approach using a cross-sectional study design. The study population was 423 married men selected using a simple random sampling technique. A structured questionnaire was administered to the participants and data were analysed using STATA 15. Statistical significance for all testing was set as 0.05. Results The study identified that most of the respondents (57.45%) had their education to the secondary level and more than half of the respondents (50.12 %) knew the correct definition of what infertility is. Majority of the respondents (76.83%) agreed that financial constraints and stigmatization (61.94%) were some of the challenges affecting males’ involvement in fertility treatment. Socio-demographic characteristics of married men such as marriage type (p-value=0.00), level of education (pvalue=0.01), employment status (p-value=0.04), occupation (Public service worker, p-value=0.04; trading, p-value=0.02), Monthly income (GH 3001 and above, pvalue=0.04), religion (p-value=0.03) and ethnic group (Ewe, p-value=0.01; Nzema, pvalue=0.02) influenced males’ involvement in fertility treatment. Moreover, reproductive characteristics of married men such as ever been able to impregnate their wives (p-value=0.00), ever been able to impregnate other woman (pvalue=0.00), and number of children (4-6 children, p-value=0.02) influenced their level of involvement in fertility treatment. Conclusion Majority of married men believed that infertility is the problem of both couples however, they were reluctant to accompany their wives for treatment since they saw it as a sole responsibility of their wives. Therefore, married men should be educated by the Ejisu Municipal Health Directorate to accompany their wives for treatment it would involve both for complete management.
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A thesis submitted to the Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health, College of Health Sciences, School of Public Health, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of Master of Public Health Degree in Population and Reproductive Health.
Keywords
Fertility, Ejisu Municipality, Ashanti Region
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