Abstract:
Background:
Adolescents make up 80% of the world population
and despite being the
hardest hit by sexual and
reproductive health challenges their sexual and reproductive health (SRH) needs are largely unmet. The
challenges are more intense among certain groups, including street adolescents based on social, cultural and
biological factors
.
Methods:
A descriptive cross sectional study was carried out in Dagoretti district of Nairobi to determine the
sexual and reproductive health behaviour risk factors among street adolescents. Data was collected through
interviews from 195 adolescents and
10 key informants.
Results:
The study established that despite moderately high SRH knowledge among 79% of the participants,
55% of them were involved in high risk sexual behaviour. Majority of the children had sex by the age of 10
-
15
years (41.9%) with o
lder partners and did not use condoms (74.4%).
In the multivariate model, the following
factors were found to be predictive of risky sexual behaviour,
male gender (pv=0.006), age in years (pv=0.037),
attendance to HIV testing (pv=0.011), parents/guardians
as a source of SRH information and combination of
number of drugs used (pv=0.001).
Conclusion:
This study recommends enactment of a comprehensive ASRH policy
aimed at providing accurate,
age
-
appropriate and comprehensive sexual and reproductive health education for all adolescents with specific
focus on early adolescence (10yrs to 14yrs) and the male gender. It further recommends for the strengthening
of
parent
al involvement in peer education, integration of
SRH and sensitization in
drugs and substances of abuse
and improvement of health centres as education and service provision centres on ASRH.
Further studies are
recommended to understand the gap between know
ledge and practice as well as the need to disaggregate data on
street children by cohorts to ensure appropriate programming for the different groups of children in contact with
the streets.
