Prevalence and associated factors of intimate partner Violence against women in gambella town, gambella Regional state, ethiopia

Abstract

Background: The issue of violence and specifically, interpersonal violence has recently been assessed by the World Health Organization as a worldwide public health priority given its incidence and prevalence throughout the world. Communities are struggling to understand and solve the problems of violence. Objective: To assess prevalence and related factors of intimate partner violence against women in Gambella town, Gambella regional state, Ethiopia. Methods: A community based cross-sectional survey was conducted in March 2014 using questionnaire adapted from WHO multi-country study. A sample of 422 ever married women reproductive age was randomly selected. Data was cleaned, explored and summarized after exporting to spss version 16.0. Descriptive statistics was done to describe each variable. Bivariate analysis was carried out to asses association between the dependent and each of independent variables and independent variables with p-value ˂ 0.25 was considered as candidate for multivariable analysis and multivariable analysis was performed. Statistical significance was described by odds ratio (AOR with 95% confidence interval) and p- value of 0.05 was considered as cut off point for statistical significance. Result: Forty five percent of the women were experienced at least one episode of intimate partner violence in one form or another way in their life time. Also 36.3 % of them had experienced at least one episode of intimate partner violence in past 12 month. Respondents that reported witnessed family violence (1.111,CI 1.027-1.201), husband drink alcohol (AOR 2.059 CI,1.046-4.054) that drink alcohol (AOR 2.083 CI 1.126-3.855), that their husband use drugs (AOR 2.218 CI 1.280-3.843) and that have no formal education (AOR 2.079, CI 1.062-4.067) were more likely to report intimate partner violence. Conclusion and recommendation: This study found that intimate partner violence was prevalent around this area. Witnessed family violence, spousal alcohol use, husband drug use and women education are factors associated with intimate partner violence. Therefore it needs urgent attention by government, all stakeholders, and professionals to alleviate this situation.