A cross sectional study on awareness about emergency contraception among medical students in Kannur, Kerala, India

2016-10-22T03-07-52Z
Source: International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health
Mohammad Iliyas C.
Background: Emergency contraception (EC) is the methods of contraception that can be used to prevent pregnancy in the first five days after sexual intercourse. Unwanted pregnancy among young adults poses a major challenge to the reproductive health in developing countries because of unsafe abortions and deaths due to the same. Since medical students are future health care providers and their awareness about EC will help in giving health education to the community. Objectives of the study were to assess the knowledge of emergency contraception among second and third year medical students in a private medical college, Kannur, Kerala, India. Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted on second and third year medical students of a private medical college, Kerala, India. A total of 200 students were interviewed using pre-validated, semi structured questionnaire. Descriptive statistics were used to analyse the data. Results: Among the study population, 58% and 42% were females and males respectively. All students were heard about EC and 78.5% were correctly aware about the correct timing of administration of EC. 52% of them felt that they can get EC directly from any pharmacy store without consultation to a doctor, 93% of the students feel that EC is not an effective routine method of contraception and only 27% said that it will result in more women suffering from STI/HIV. Conclusions: Present study showed that, students were having above average knowledge about EC. Since they are the health care providers in future, giving proper training to them in acquiring good knowledge will help in dispensing the health education to the community especially youth in future.


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