Regional and Country Prevalence Estimates of Unsafe Sex Among Adolescents in 68 Low-Income and Middle-Income Countries.

Arch Sex Behav

Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences, National Centre for Youth Substance Use Research, The University of Queensland, 31 Upland Road, St. Lucia, QLD, 4067, Australia.

Published: June 2024

Prioritizing adolescent health is a public health priority to achieve the sustainable development goals, including reducing the risk of unsafe sex. Data on unsafe sex have remained scarce among adolescents in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs). To estimate the prevalence of unsafe sex in LMICs, we conducted secondary data analysis on the Global School-based Student Health Surveys among 244,863 students aged 13-17 years from 68 countries across five World Health Organization regions. The overall prevalence of ever had sex was 16.2%. The highest to lowest regional prevalence estimation of ever had sex was 30.5% (28.9-32.1) in the Americas, 28.6% (26.8-30.4) in Africa, 10.9% (9.2-12.6) in the Eastern Mediterranean, 9.6% (8.8-10.5) in South-East Asia, and 8.0% (6.8-9.1) in the Western Pacific. The highest prevalence of sexual intercourse before age 14 and practicing sexual intercourse without condom use were 36.5% (34.5-38.5) and 32.2% (30.1-34.3) in Africa, respectively. Findings suggest that current interventions are inadequate in promoting the uptake of safe sexual behaviors and an urgent intervention is needed.

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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11176239PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10508-024-02861-1DOI Listing

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