Are Nepali students at risk of HIV? A cross-sectional study of condom use at first sexual intercourse among college students in Kathmandu

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Condoms offer the best protection against unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections. Little research has been conducted to determine the prevalence and investigate the influencing factors of condom use at first sexual intercourse among college students.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A self-administered questionnaire was completed by 1137 college students (573 male and 564 female) in the Kathmandu Valley. Analyses were confined to 428 students who reported that they have ever had sexual intercourse. The association between condom use at first sexual intercourse and the explanatory variables was assessed in bivariate analysis using Chi-square tests. The associations were further explored using multivariate logistic analysis in order to identify the significant predictors after controlling for other variables.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Among the sexually active students, less than half (48%) had used condoms during first sexual intercourse. The results from the logistic regression analysis revealed that age, caste and/or ethnicity, age at first sexual intercourse, types of first sex partner, alcohol consumption and mass media exposure are significant predictors for condom use at first sexual intercourse among the college students. Students in the older age groups who had first sex were about four times (16 to 19 years old) (OR = 3.5) more likely and nine times (20 or older) (OR = 8.9) more likely than the students who had sex before 16 years of age to use condoms at first sexual intercourse.</p> <p>Moreover, those students who had first sex with commercial sex worker were five times (OR = 4.9) more likely than those who had first sex with their spouse to use condoms at first sex. Furthermore, students who had higher exposure to both print and electronic media were about twice (OR = 1.75) as likely as those who had lower media exposure to use condoms. On the other hand, students who frequently consumed alcohol were 54% (OR = 0.46) less likely to use condoms at first sexual intercourse than those who never or rarely consumed alcohol.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The rate of condom use at first sexual intercourse is low among the students. It indicates students are exposed to health hazards through their sexual behaviour. If low use of condom at first sex continues, vulnerable sexual networks will grow among them that allow quicker spreading of sexually transmitted diseases and HIV. Findings from this study point to areas that policy and programmes can address to provide youth with access to the kinds of information and services they need to achieve healthy sexual and reproductive lives.</p

Representation as politics: asserting a feminist ethic in ethnographic research

As ethnographers we are familiar with methodological debates problematizing ethnography’s inherited and inherent connections to ideas of authenticity commonly mobilised to legitimate modes of representation. In this paper, we engage with the post-structural philosophies of Jacques Rancière and Judith Butler, to argue that methodological tools of representation are always ‘political’ and as such shape the limitations of what can be known. In order to trace the overlapping methodological foundations which inform our ethnographic representations, we introduce three paradigmatic constructions of ethnography. By paying attention to the ways in which our ethnographic representations mark the perceptibility of educational practices and purposes, we assert a feminist ethic through the representation of the ‘livable life’ as a productive methodological provocation