Knowledge And Attitudes Of Students From Kosovo Towards Sexually Transmitted Infections-Stis

Abstract

Introduction: Sexually transmitted infections (STI) represent a major concern encountered by physicians. Sexually transmitted infections are spread through sexual contact which includes vaginal, anal, oral as well as the use of sex games. The greatest risk of acquiring any STIs comes from unprotected sexual activity with an infected partner. However, everyone who is sexually active is at risk from STIs. There are different factors which highly contribute in the spread of STIs and as a result mostly young people are in risk to get affected by them. Considering the importance and knowing all the risk factors involved in the spread of STIs, there is the need to better evaluate the knowledge of the young people on STIs in order to design appropriate strategies and programs for the awareness on sexually transmitted infections, about the protection against these infections,  identifying possible factors that affect sexual health and achieving good results in relation to sexual health.

Aim: The main purpose of this research is to identify the level of knowledge of young people of Kosovo on STIs, identify sources of information about STIs and evaluate the connection (association) of knowledge about contraceptive methods and use.

Materials and Methods: The study has a qualitative approach, self-report questionnaires were used to evaluate the knowledge and attitudes of young people about sexually transmitted infections. In this study, 253 high school students took part. The schools in which the research was carried out were: medical, competence, science, linguistic and social sciences high school. For this research, a questionnaire consisting of a total of 20 questions was used to evaluate the knowledge and attitudes of young people on sexually transmitted infections. Initially, permission was obtained to access to High Schools for conducting this research and the students were informed in advance about the purpose of the research and that the data will be used only for the study and will be confidential. The time for self-administration of the questionnaire was 5-10 minutes. The data was collected from May 10-30, 2020, and analyzed using the Google Classroom online platform in the form of a quiz/questionnaire.

Conclusions: Our results suggest that continuous training should be organized in the field of teacher-student communication, in order to improve teaching performance in this aspect. There should be an inclusion of sex education in schools at all levels of pre-university education and treating social workers in schools to focus on the emotional, intellectual and physical aspects of sexual health would be essential. It would also be fruitful if teachers, parents, health workers discussed with young people more about sexual health. And lastly, creating special awareness offices in schools and centers for counseling and treatment would highly increase the information and thus the prevention of young people affected by STI