Aboagye, Richard Gyan, Donkoh, Irene Esi, Okyere, Joshua, Seidu, Abdul-Aziz, Ahinkorah, Bright Opoku, and Yaya, Sanni (2024) Association between sexual violence and multiple high-risk fertility behaviours among women of reproductive age in sub-Saharan Africa. BMC Public Health, 24. 432.

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Abstract

Background Intimate partner violence has adverse outcomes on the sexual and reproductive health of women. In this study, we examined the association between sexual violence and multiple high-risk fertility behaviours (MHRFB) among women in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

Methods We conducted a cross-sectional analysis of data pooled from the most recent Demographic and Health Surveys of 20 countries in SSA. We included countries with most recent datasets conducted from 2015 to 2021 and had data on all variables included in the study. A weighted sample of 88,011 was included in the study. We used a multilevel binary logistic regression to examine the association between sexual violence and MHRFB, controlling for other covariates. The regression results were presented using adjusted odds ratio (aOR) with 95% confidence interval (CI). Statistical significance was set at p < 0.05.

Results The overall prevalence of MHRFB was 22.53% (95% CI: 22.26–22.81), which ranged from 9.94% in South Africa to 30.38% in Chad. For sexual violence, the pooled prevalence was 7.02% (95% CI: 6.86–7.19). Burundi (20.58%) and the Gambia (2.88%) reported the highest and lowest proportions, respectively. Women who experienced sexual violence were more likely to engage in MHRFB compared to those who did not experience sexual violence [aOR = 1.11, 95% CI: 1.02, 1.21].

Conclusion There is a positive association between sexual violence and the risk of MHRFB. Our findings underscore a need for sub-Saharan African countries to strengthen their efforts to reduce the occurrence of sexual violence in intimate partner relationships. To augment efforts and accelerate social change, sub-Saharan African countries can introduce pro-poor policies and interventions to improve the wealth status of women. Also, empowering women through the encouragement of attaining higher education would be a useful step in lowering the risk of MHRFB in SSA.

Item ID:	85376
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	1471-2458
Copyright Information:	Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. © The Author(s) 2024.
Date Deposited:	07 May 2025 00:54
FoR Codes:	42 HEALTH SCIENCES > 4206 Public health > 420606 Social determinants of health @ 100%
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