Prevalence and factors associated with unsafe abortion among students of Makerere University.

Abstract

Background: Maternal mortality is still very high globally and especially in sub-Sahara Africa and is a major reproductive health burden. Unsafe abortion is the biggest contributor, to maternal mortality with 13% of all maternal deaths. High sexual behavior in students of higher institutions of learning predisposes them greatly to un-intended pregnancies that lead to high abortion rates. The lack of information about the prevalence and associated factors of unsafe abortion creates a gap in information required for abortion law amendments and health policy formulation to curb these cases of unsafe abortion. Objectives: To determine the prevalence and factors associated with unsafe abortion among students of Makerere University. Methods: A cross-sectional study was done amongst 395 Makerere university female finalist students between August 2022 and September 2022. Multi stage sampling using the lottery method was used to get first the colleges, then departments and finally simple random sampling of the participant’s themselves was done. Anonymously filled self-administered questionnaires were used for data collection and modified Poisson regression was used in Stata 14.1 for analysis. Results: With a response rate of 98.7% (390/395), 14.1% (7.6-25) of the total females had aborted using unsafe means. An increase in age (aPR 0.98, 95% CI: 0.97-0.98) and in economic status (aPR 0.99, 95% CI: 0.99-0.99) were significantly associated with a decrease in expected unsafe abortions. Conclusions: High rate of unsafe abortions was found amongst the female finalist students and age was negatively associated with unsafe abortions. Older female students should be given leadership roles in university clubs that educate girls about possible birth control methods and more case control studies should be done to establish causal associations.