Knowledge, attitude and associated factors to liberalized safe abortion services among female students in university of adigrat town, Ethiopia

Background: World Health Organization (WHO) defines unsafe abortion as a procedure for terminating an unintended pregnancy carried out either by persons lacking the necessary skills or in an environment that does not conform to minimal medical standards, or both. Unsafe abortion is the cause of serious complications and disability for millions of women each year and is a prominent cause of maternal death. Globally, unsafe abortions claim the lives of 68,000 women each year; 43% of these women are African. Africa accounts for 25% of all illegal abortions performed worldwide and less than 1% of all legal abortions .One study was conducted in Mekelle to assess reproductive aged individuals’ attitude to legalization safe abortion before it was liberalized in Ethiopia in 2002. This study found that out of the total respondents, 473 (56.4%) preferred induced abortion on demand to be legalized, while 355 (42.4%) opposed it. Methods: Institution based cross-sectional quantitative and qualitative study will be employed to assess awareness and attitude of under graduated university female students. Sample size calculated by using single population proportion. A sample of 738 female students of Adigrat University found in Tigray region, North Ethiopia, the study will be employed by using multistage sampling method. Data entry, cleaning and coding will be performed using STATA version 11 and analyzed with the same soft ware. Associations between dependent and independent variables will test using logistic regression with the assumptions of p-values  0.05 and confidence interval 95% will be considered to be statistically significant in all cases. Result: Out of 706 students who heard about safe abortion, more than half 359 (50.8%) have knowledge on safe abortion. College of business & economics and social science (AOR=0.297, 0.184,95% CI: (0.309, 0.997) (0.214, 0.628) respectively, respondents residence before joining university (AOR= 1.4, 95% CI: 1.372,2.756), year of study,(AOR= 2.6, 95% CI: 2.384,6.858),fathers occupation (AOR=1.8, 95% CI:1.044,2.966) and monthly income received (AOR= 2.04, 95% CI: 1.704,5.892) were factors has an association with knowledge of students towards safe abortion. Concerning attitude, more than half of participants (64.4%) have positive attitude towards safe abortion. College of business & economics and social science(AOR= 0.45,0.18, 95% CI: 0.309,0.997 and 0.314,0.628) respectively, ethnicity (AOR= 1.6, 95% CI: 1.114,2.403),religion (AOR= 0.42, 95% CI: 0.372,0.756),year of study (AOR= 1..57, 95% CI: 2.384,4.858) and mother of education(AOR= 1.76, 95% CI: 1.044,2.966) were factors has an association with attitude of students towards safe abortion. Conclusions and Recommendations: The knowledge of the students has found to be relatively knowledgeable towards safe abortion. Colleges, respondent’s residence before joining university, year of study and income sent from family are likely to have association towards knowledge on safe abortion. More than half of the students have positive attitudes towards safe abortion. Only college, ethnicity, religion, year of study and mother of education has significant association with attitude towards safe abortion. Still the issue needs, much more effort should be done on information education and communication of awareness creation on legal background of safe abortion. Furthermore, researches should be conducted to assess the awareness of rural and less educated adolescents toward legalization of safe abortion. Studies exploring the attitude-practice gap should be done on women of abortion, stakeholders and early initiation of sexual intercourse to see the cause and effect relationship clearly.