Unsafe abortion was recognized problem worldwide which accounts 7.9% and 10% of all maternal mortality in the world and Ethiopia respectively. Nearly all unsafe abortions (98%) occur in developing countries. Even though the abortion penal code of Ethiopia was amended in 2005, to permit safe abortion under a set of some criteria, there is high number of unsafe abortion rate nationally (28/1000) and among University students (65/1000), from which only 50% was safe abortion which may be due to the possibility of low knowledge on liberalized safe abortion in our country.
To assess knowledge of safe abortion and associated factors among female students in Debre Markos University, Amhara Regional State, Northwest Ethiopia, April, 2016.
A cross sectional study was conducted on 483 undergraduate regular female students from April 4-18, 2016 in Debre Markos University. Simple random sampling was used. Self-administered structured questionnaire was used to collect data. Data was entered in to Epi Info version 7 and analyzed by SPSS version 20. Odds ratio with 95% confidence interval was used to identify associated factors and multivariable logistic regression to adjust the effects of possible cofounders.
All questionnaires (507) were filled, but 24 questionnaires were incomplete and have been rejected from the data analysis, which gives response rate of 95.3%. 199 (41.2%) of the respondents were knowledgeable about liberalized safe abortion. By multivariable logistic regression analysis, marital status [AOR = 2.44, 95% of CI:(1.35,4.42) ], family residence [AOR = 1.56, 95% of CI:(1.03, 2.39)], maternal educational level [AOR = 2.68, 95% of CI:(1.08,6.61)] and ever had pregnant before [AOR = 10.68, 95% of CI:(4.52,25.22)] were the factors significantly associated with knowledge of female students to liberalized safe abortion.
High proportions of students were not knowledgeable about safe abortion. Awareness creation toward safe abortion is very important in university students.