Utilisation of sexual and reproductive health services among young people with disabilities in Ghana

Abstract

Employing the health care utilisation model, the study sought to assess the utilisation of sexual and reproductive health services (SRHS) among young people with disabilities (YPWDs) in Ghana. A descriptive cross-sectional survey was carried out among 2127 young people with disabilities who were purposely selected from 16 special schools in Ghana. Both bivariate and multivariate analyses were done to examine the associations between some background characteristics and utilisation, challenges and barriers of accessing SRHS. The results provide evidence that there is high utilisation of SRHS by YPWDs in Ghana. Religion, ecological zone and self rated health status were found to be the main factors associated with utilisation of SRHS among YPWDS. It was also evident that YPWDs face challenges and barriers in their quest to accessing SRHS. The major challenges and barriers were financial constraints, problem of communication and physical barriers. These challenges and barriers were associated with sex, educational level, ecological zone, disability type and self-rated health status. It was recommended that to sustain high utilization of SRHS, the Ministry of Health (MOH) and the Ministry of Education (MOE) should strengthen health education to YPWDs on the need to use SRHS, government of Ghana should make it an intervention priority to produce some of the SRH information in electronic forms for young people who are visually impaired to have access to SRHS, the MOH collaboration with the MOE should make it an intervention priority to strengthen the training on the use of sign language to a special group of nurses to attend to the needs of the hearing impaired when they visit health facilities for SRHS and the Government of Ghana should strengthen the free healthcare services that YPWDs access as this can reduce SRH problems they face including HIV and AIDS.