Health seeking behaviour of teenagers with regard to sexually transmitted infections: a case study of Ilala district in Dar es Salaam Region.

This study has focused on the health seeking behaviour of teenagers pertaining to Sexually Transmitted Infections in Tanzania, particularly at Ilala District in Dar es Salaam region. STIs are the major cause of acute illness, infertility, long term disability and death with severe medical and psychological consequences for millions of people particularly youth. The main objective of the study was to determine teenagers' health seeking behaviour when they contract STIs, and to look at patterns of treatment seeking, and teenagers own rationale for this. The specific objective has been to investigate what teenagers in Ilala district resort to when they acquire STIs and to examine factors that hinder teenagers' hospital treatment seeking behaviour when they have STIs. Findings have shown that teenagers seek treatment when the disease is at the critical stage. 56.6 % opt for self medication, 16.7% prefer hospital treatment, 13.3% goes to traditional healers and 13.3% seek treatment to the pharmacy. In most cases they do not seek proper treatment when infected due to lack of enough education, fear of being known, and lack of communication between parents and teenagers and between teenagers themselves, occupation and lack of awareness. Among the factors that hinders teenagers' hospital treatment behaviour are; difficult accessibility of the health facilities, embarrassment and lack of education. From a bio-psychoogcial perspective, the transmission of STIs involves the level of infection, duration of infectiousness and the rate of acquisition of sexual partners. Thus an important factor in the control of STIs is to modify this rate of transmission by ensuring access to and encouraging individuals to utilize health services for early diagnosis and treatment of themselves and their partners.