Browsing by Author "Odoi-Agyarko, Kwasi"

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    Female genital mutilation and reproductive health morbidity in teenage girls and young adult women in Bolgatanga District
    (2000) Odoi-Agyarko, Kwasi
    This work was undertaken to assess the prevalence, correlates, and the effect of education and urbanisation on Female Genital Mutilation (FOM) in Secondary School girls in the Bolgatanga District. The associations between FGM and Reproductive Tract Infections (RTI) and Reproductive Health morbidity were also determined. Furthermore it attempted to establish some of the socio-cultural and religious reasons for the practice of FGM. The study used qualitative methods that included Key Informant Interviews, focus group discussion (FGD), and participants’ observation as well as quantitative methods that used structured questionnaire for interviews. Specially trained Doctors, Midwives and Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs) conducted physical and pelvic examinations to identify the various types of FGM. Finally, laboratory investigations were conducted in the Bolgatanga Central Hospital laboratory, Rural Help Integrated Medical Centre laboratory and the Public Health Reference Laboratory Services, Korlebu Teaching Hospital, Accra. The subjects for the study was made up of 411 in-school subjects and 454 out-of-school subjects aged between 15 years and 23 years all living in the Bolgatanga District for the non-randomised cohort study, 3,520 women who delivered at the Bolgatanga Central Hospital between 1998 and 1999 and 2,119 women who were delivered by TBAs in the rural areas of five sub-districts in the Upper East Region. The study determined that FGM is practiced in the Upper East Region of Ghana for various reasons in the different communities and any effort to eradiate FGM should be addressed on one-on-one basis depending on the major reason why it is practiced in the specific community and the variation in the prevalence rates of FGM is determined by the different reasons why FOM is practised in the different communities and by the geographic location of the community. Overall, subjects living in rural areas have three times the risk of being cut (odds ratio: 3.70 (3.28