International Family Planning Perspectives articles from September 2007

International Family Planning Perspectives archives from September 2007

In this issue.
September 1, 2007... Although HIV prevalence is high among young people in South Africa, particularly among young women, little is known about how young people perceive their risk of infection or about how these perceptions are related to their sexual behavior. The...

Poor women in Brazil find home STI testing acceptable.(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... Use of home-based STI self-collection and testing kits for chlamydia, gonorrhea and trichomoniasis is acceptable to low-income women, according to a study conducted between April and November 2004 in Sao Paulo, Brazil. (1) A total of 818 women...

Diaphragm adds no HIV protection to condom.(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... Women provided with a dia-phragm and lubricant gel in addition to condoms to use during sex do not have a lower risk of becoming infected with HIV than women provided with condoms only, according to a study conducted in South Africa and...

Monthly injectable does not raise risk of cancer.
September 1, 2007... One-month injectable contraceptive use does not appear to be associated with an increased risk of cancer. (1) As part of a study of female textile workers in Shanghai, China, 267,400 women were interviewed between October 1989 and October 1991;...

Hormonal methods are not linked to HIV risk.(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... There appears to be no association between current hormonal contraceptive use and HIV infection, according to a study of women aged 35-49 conducted in Cape Town, South Africa. Of the 4,200 HIV-negative women who were enrolled in the study...

Gender equality is better for mothers and children.(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... In the developing world, improving women's autonomy and household authority may also improve children's chances of survival, according to a study of 7,534 children born between 1988 and 1993 in six subdistricts of Bangladesh and their mothers....

Pharmacies are important STI intervention sites.(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... Men and women who visit pharmacies in Lima, Peru, seeking care for urethral or vaginal symptoms have infection rates comparable to those of the country's general population, making pharmacies an important venue for STI treatment and...

Nigerian students underestimate their HIV risk.(Brief article)
September 1, 2007... Undergraduates in Nigeria do not accurately perceive their true risk of acquiring HIV, according to a study of students of two colleges in the southwest of the country. (1) Of the 405 male and female undergraduates who completed a questionnaire...

HIV risk perceptions and first sexual intercourse among youth in Cape Town, South Africa.
September 1, 2007... CONTEXT: HIV prevalence is high among South African youth. Health behavior models posit that the perceived level of risk of HIV infection is associated with the level of HIV risk behavior; however, there has been limited research in Sub-Saharan...

Legal abortion worldwide: incidence and recent trends.
September 1, 2007... CONTEXT: Information on abortion levels and trends can inform research and policies affecting maternal and reproductive health, but the incidence of legal abortion has not been assessed in nearly a decade. METHODS: Statistics on legal...

Changes in contraceptive method mix in developing countries.
September 1, 2007... CONTEXT: Understanding shifts in contraceptive method mix is key to helping policymakers, program managers and donor agencies meet current contraceptive demand and estimate future needs in developing countries. METHODS: Data from...

Consent and coercion: examining unwanted sex among married young women in India.
September 1, 2007... CONTEXT: Although there is a growing body of research examining the issue of nonconsensual sex among adolescents, few studies have looked at coerced sex within marriage in settings where early marriage is common, or at sex that may not be...

The pleasure deficit: revisiting the "sexuality connection" in reproductive health.
September 1, 2007... In a seminal 1993 article, Ruth Dixon-Mueller questioned the reproductive health field's conceptualization of sexuality, arguing that it had treated intercourse as a sanitized, emotionally neutral act. (1) If one were to learn about human...

Bangladeshi husbands' work migration is linked to elevated levels of risky behavior for both spouses.
September 1, 2007... In Bangladesh, where migration is crucial to many individuals' and families' livelihood, spouses who spend time living apart because of the husband's work migration engage in higher levels of risky behavior than do those who never live apart...

Government-funded care is linked to higher perinatal mortality risk in Brazil.
September 1, 2007... In Belo Horizonte, Brazil, perinatal mortality was higher in hospitals that provided care under government contracts than in private hospitals that did not receive such funding, according to a cohort study of nearly 41,000 births in 24...

Female and male condoms offer similar protection against exposure to semen.
September 1, 2007... Breakage, slippage and other mechanical problems occur more frequently with female than with male condoms, but the two devices are about equally effective barriers to semen exposure, according to findings from a randomized crossover trial...

Among HIV-infected South Africans, nondisclosure is linked to risky behavior.
September 1, 2007... In a South African study conducted primarily at clinics providing HIV services, roughly two in five HIV-positive men and women said they had recently had sex without disclosing their HIV status to their partner. (1) In many cases, this sex was...

Sub-Saharan Africa and Eurasia lag behind other regions in use of skilled attendants at delivery.
September 1, 2007... Substantial progress has been made throughout much of the developing world toward improving the proportion of births delivered with the help of medically trained attendants. (1) According to an analysis of nationally representative data from 73...

Among Bangladeshi men, wife abuse is associated with extramarital sex.
September 1, 2007... Among married men in Bangladesh, those who reported having abused their wife physically, sexually or both in the previous year were more likely to report having premarital and extramarital sex partners than husbands who reported no such abuse,...