📝 Abstract

Background: Reproductive tract infection (RTI) is the most common health problem of the rural women particularly the tribal and has a severe effect on social, psychological and economic aspect of life apart from the physical health. Therefore, present study was conducted to probe the perception, attitude and prevalence of the RTIs among Lodha tribal women. \n\nMethodology: This cross-sectional survey was carried out among 500 married women in reproductive age group. All information was collected through one-to-one interview. The prevalence of the symptoms of RTI was recorded by interviewing married women distributed proportionally according to female population among 29 villages in six community development blocks with overwhelming concentration of tribe and selected systematically at most 20 women in each selected village.\n\nResult: About 69% of the women reported suffering from one or the other RTI related symptoms. The common symptoms reported were lower abdominal pain (51%), itching or irritation around the vagina (50%), abnormal discharge (41%) and fishy smelling discharge (25.2%). Sixty three percent of women suffered from RTI experienced problems during sex. About 48% of the effected women tried in different ways to cure disease/infection and only a few (4%) visited government health centre. \n\nConclusion: Services of traditional health providers and less qualified private practitioner of modern medicine are mostly consulted for treatment. Mis-information guides the perception of Lodha women towards RTI and its symptom. Need of the hour is to develop awareness towards the infection among the masses and also strengthen the outreach services in remote tribal areas.

🏷️ Keywords

RTIbehaviouralreported symptomsever married womenLodha tribeWest BengalIndia
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Citation

Kalyan Brata Saha, Uma Chatterjee Saha, Samiran Bisai. (2023). Behavioural Dimensions of Reported Reproductive Tract Infection among the Tribes: Experience from primitive Lodha Tribe of Eastern India. Cithara Journal, 63(4). ISSN: 0009-7527