Harmful traditional practices (HTP). An analysis of its prevalence of and associated factors among children in Ethiopia (PDF)

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2018 in the subject Sociology - Gender Studies, Arsi University, language: English, abstract: This empirical study was designed to assess prevalence and associated factors of harmful traditional practices (HTP) on children less than 15 years in the Fentale District, Oromia Region.

Harmful traditional practices encompass a range of abuse which results in physical and psychological harm, disability and even death for significant numbers of women. Following forced marriage, a woman may be abused by her husband and sometimes, by her in-laws. The health consequences are considerable and can include physical, emotional and psychological harm which can be chronic or acute. While child marriages are declining on girls under age 15, fifty million girls could still be at risk of being married before 15th birth day in this decade ,complications of pregnancy and child birth are the main causes of death on adolescent girls age 15-19 years old in developing countries and 30 million girls are at risk of undergoing Female Genital Mutilation(FGM) in the next decade half of the countries where FGM Is practiced; majority of girls were cut before age 5.

In Ethiopia more than one-third of ever-married women (35 percent) report that they have experienced physical emotional or sexual violence from their husband, sixty-five percent of women age 15-49 are circumcised,8% of girls married before age 15 and 84.3% of children's are experiencing uvulectomy. As a result of high prevalence of HTPs in Ethiopia many health consequences like hemorrhage, damage to nearby structures, tetanus, heavy scarring ,recurrent infections, HIV/AIDS, obstructed labor, fistulae, depression, suicide, and even death occurs in significant number of women's and children's.

In this research, a community based cross-sectional study design with multistage sampling technique was undertaken. Data was collected by trained college students using a structured face to face interview and data collected was entered in to Epi info version and transferred to statistical package for social sciences( SPSS Version 21) for bivariate and multivariate analysis.