Physical Health Status and Health Seeking Behaviour of Tribal Adolescent Girls: A Cross Sectional Study

Abstract

The word ‘Adolescent’ has been derived from Latin word ‘Adolescere’ which means ‘to grow to maturity’.
Adolescence is characterized by rapid physical, biological and hormonal changes resulting in psychosocial,
behavioural and sexual maturation. WHO defines adolescence as the segment of life between the ages of
10-19 years. There are 1-2 billion adolescents in the world, 85% of them live in developing countries. The
adolescent population constitutes about 18-25% of the total population of the South East Asian Region.
Material and Methods:
Objectives: To assess morbidity status of adolescent girls,
To evaluate health seeking behavior of the study population. Community based cross sectional descriptive
study. All girls in the age of 10-19 yrs were selected including married, antenatal and postnatal subjects.
Adolescent girls, who were, not present at the time of visit nd who have not given their consent.
My sample size required 425, total adolescent girls in 18 habitations are 1572, so 1572/425=3.69, every 4th
adolescent girl who was available taken for the study by using systemic random sampling method.
Results: In the study population, majority of the morbidities observed were- brittle hair(67.3%), pigmentation
on the face(27.2%), bitots spots (19.1%) , angular stomatitis (19.8%), pallor (19.1%), myopia (16.2%),
malocclusion (10.8%), thyroid enlargement (9.6%) and mycosis (8.9%).Table no 1shows complete profile
of morbidities among adolescent girls.
Conclusion: Awareness regarding AFHC and utilisation of school health services; intensify IEC activities
and ensure proper monitoring of IFA supplementation and effective implementation of nutritional
programmes to prevent morbidities and enhance their nutritional status. Maximum availment of health
services and implementation of AYUSH at community level in outreach areas like tribal communities.
Vocational trainings to develop income generation skills to avoid dependence. Girls of this age group need
to be addressed as special target category by developmental programmes to prepare them for the challenging
tasks of citizenship in general and motherhood in particular.