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.
