Researcher, Dept. of Population Studies and Social Work, S.V. University, Tirupati
Online published on 22 August, 2016.
The WHO believes that education for health is a fundamental right of every child. Education can help to increase self-esteem, develop effective communication skills, and encourage each person to respect his or her own body as well as understand their responsibilities to others. The adolescent experiences not only physical growth and change but also emotional, psychological, social, and mental change and growth. Physiological changes lead to sexual maturity and usually occur during the first several years of this period. Adolescents in worldwide and more so in developing countries are at greater risk of reproductive health's adverse consequences, amounting to over a billion young people 85% of whom live in developing countries. Reproductive health covers all aspects of adolescent health and it is an umbrella concept consisting of several distinct, yet related issues such as abortion, child birth, sexuality, contraception and maternal mortality. Biological, social, cultural, economical and behavioural factors play an important role in determination of reproductive health. Reproductive health addresses the reproductive processes, functions and system at all the stages of life. So reproductive health means people have the capacity to reproduce and the freedom to decide if, when and how often to do so.
To study the reproductive health knowledge and issues among adolescents school going girls.
Government and Private high schools in three revenue divisions of Chittoor district were selected randomly and Multistage simple random technique was adopted for this study.
Majority 88.8 per cent of the respondents were having knowledge on menstruation. 36.7 per cent of the respondents were not discussing with their mother about menstruation. More than one-half (54.6 per cent) of the respondents were not heard about reproductive health. 87. 9 per cent of the respondents were agreed that lack of personal hygiene is one of the reasons for Reproductive Tract Infection (RTI).
