Adolescent Sexual Behavior in an Urban Area of a Resource-Limited African Country, Cameroon

Abstract

Introduction: The substantial changes that occur in adolescence may lead to sexual \nbehaviors that adversely affect their health. We have described sexual patterns \nin adolescents in various neighborhoods of Yaounde in order to underscore the \nsexual challenges that they face. Methods: We carried out a cross-sectional descriptive study \nin District number V of Yaounde from August 1st to 31st 2018. To characterize \ntheir sexual lives, we surveyed 1800 adolescents between 10 and 19, and \nanalyzed the data using SPSS version 25.0. Results: In our study, 1023 (56.8%) \nadolescents were female, and 777 (43.2%) were male. Most of the adolescents \nwere between ages 18 and 19 years (25.4%), unmarried (93.1%), had a secondary \nlevel of education (81.9%) and lived with their families (87.3%). One-third \nof the adolescents (30.7%) were sexually active and 41.1% had multiple sexual \npartners. The average age of coitarche was 15.1 years. Among the females, 17.1% \nreported one prior pregnancy and 30.8% had one abortion. Most of the sexual \nencounters were heterosexual (82.6%) and 30.2% regularly used male condoms. \n66.0% and 47.7% obtained information about sexuality primarily from social \nmedia and mass media, respectively. Conclusion: Sexual encounters in adolescents of District V of \nYaounde were premature, mostly heterosexual and often unprotected. The \nconsequences were an increased incidence of early pregnancies and abortions.