ABSTRACT

The study was designed to assess the accessibility and utilization of reproductive health services among adolescents in the South-east, Nigeria. It specifically described the socio-economic characteristics of the adolescents; examined adolescents’ level of awareness of services; ascertained adolescents level of accessibility to RHS; ascertained adolescents level of utilization of reproductive health services; examined factors influencing accessibility to reproductive health services; determined  perceived socio-cultural factors influencing utilization reproductive health services; determined adolescents level of perceived need for reproductive health services; examined adolescents’ perception towards the attitudes of RH service providers’; examined adolescents level of satisfaction with reproductive health services. Three stage sampling technique was used to select 282 rural adolescents between 15-19 years of age.  A structured questionnaire and Focus Group Discussion were used to collect information from the respondents. The data collected was analysed using descriptive (percentages and mean count) and inferential (Probit regression model and ANOVA) statistics were used in testing hypotheses. The result revealed that level of accessibility was low at (21.3%) and Mean scores showed that some factors  influences rural adolescents accessibility to reproductive health services such  as fear of meeting a known person,  location of facility and its environment (= 3.15 ), walking distance to facility (= 3.11 ), ignorant of available reproductive health services facility in the locality(= 3.11). On the level of utilization of reproductive health services, the result revealed low utilization  across the states with a grand mean score of 2.49 and some  socio-cultural factors such as, affiliation with religion group(= 3.15), fear of stigmatization(=3.29), attitude of service providers(=3.28), parental communication (=3.27), were the major factors constraining rural adolescents from utilization of available reproductive health services. Rural adolescents have negative perception of the attitudes of service provider with a grand mean score of 3.35 Also the result showed that the rural adolescents across the region  perceived  the need for reproductive health services low with a grand mean score  (=2.53).  Furthermore, the findings revealed negative perception of attitude of service provider among respondents with a grand mean of ( =3.42),  perceived need was high with a grand mean of ( =2.53), level of satisfaction was low with a grand mean of (= 2.38). In conclusion, the study discovered that accessibility to reproductive health services is influenced by health facility and personal factors of the rural adolescents while utilization of the services is affected by socio-cultural factors of the rural adolescents. Furthermore, probit regression revealed significant relationship at different levels of significance. The study is therefore recommending that Government should collaborate with some other non-governmental agencies to establish separate adolescent friendly health  clinics, South-east stakeholders to engage media and mobile approach services in promotion of available reproductive health services, there is need to train more health service providers who are youths,  federal ministry of health to collaborate with federal ministry of education to make reproductive health services an integral content of Health Education and Biology subjects in school.