A Dissertation Submitted In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for Award of Master of Health System Management of Mzumbe University
The study was conducted in Morogoro urban in Tanzania to explore the relationship between the cultural orientation and students risky sexual behaviors and examine whether and how modern intervention including modern contraception influence these behaviors to secondary and primary schools students. The main concern was to find out if traditional intervention through cultural orientation could be a proper strategy for risky sexual behaviors by determining the cultural orientation negative roles in students‟ sexual behaviors and also whether and how modern intervention programs for risky sexual behaviors had succeeded to reduce the problem. The study employed cross-sectional design: structured and unstructured questionnaires were used to collect both primary and secondary data. It involved 300 respondents from five secondary schools that were purposively selected while convenience sampling was used in choosing 1 education officer, 1 health officer and 3 indigenous aged people. Findings: 85% of students in secondary schools had sex before 19 years in which 68.33% of them did not use condoms completely as a result of cultural orientation factors; initiation ceremonies fostered the problem by 74.57% for males and 79.81% for females; having multiple sexual partners by 78.18% for males and 60.67% for females; Religion fostered the risky sexual behaviours by 61.42%; the orientation to use calendar or safe days method than modern contraceptives to females by 64.67%; social taboos caused 28% of males and 41.33% females not to use condoms. The parents‟ use of strokes to punish their children had led to the increase of risky behaviors among 19% of male students‟ while for females it decreased.
Cultural orientation factors had impact on failure or success of the modern strategies including contraceptives on controlling risky sexual behaviours, thus there was a call for improvement of sexual health education via reviewing the cultural orientation factors in efforts to combat them.