Assessment on use of mobile technology to enhance access to sexual and reproductive health information and services among adolescents’ population in a selected district of Rwanda

Abstract

Background: Worldwide, the consequences of poor sexual and reproductive health exist especially in under developments nations where there is an increase in rate of unwanted pregnancies, STIs etc., Globally, reproductive health programs have used mHealth to provide sexual and reproductive health (SRH) education and services to adolescent’s people, through diverse communication channels to decrease problem of poor sexual and reproductive health to adolescents. Rwanda is adopting mhealth to decrease problem of poor sexual and reproductive health for Rwandan adolescents. The aim of this study is to assess the use of mobile technology to enhance access to sexual and reproductive health information and services among Adolescents population in a selected district of Rwanda. Methodology of the study: A quantitative descriptive cross section study has been used in this study. The population were adolescent female and male of Groupe scolaire Kirehe, where the sample has been simple randomly chosen from adolescent student in range of 10 to 19 years and have responded to the questionnaire that I have analyzed data from it using SPSS software. Results: The finding from all 201 respondents find that 41.3% of the respondents are male and 58.7% are female, the range of age is 10 to 19 years with most of respondents are in range of 14 to 16 years and take 52.7%. Most of respondents get information on SRH from their siblings (23.9%), teachers (21.4%) and friends (33.8%) while using mobile technology for this purpose is low where the finding show that only 4.5% of respondents use mobile technology to access SRH information and services. 84.6% of the participants have the problem of phone ownship but only 15.4% own a phone or can barrow a phone, among those who can own or borrow a phone only 12.8% use small phone then 2.5% use smart phone. Respondents who use phone to get information on ASRH are 7% with 5% use free hotline of HDI to get information on SRH,1.5% of respondents use Agaciro kanjye book. About service they have accessed through mobile technology almost respondents mention Information on ASRH with 4.5%. 5% of the respondents responded that it is easy to access the information they were looking for where 4% were very satisfied. 96% agreed on the fact that using mobile technology will enable them to ask questions that they fear to ask when they are in health center. Most of the respondents have barriers that limit them to use mobile technology where 96.5% have phone ownership problem, then 83.6% lack publicity regarding online platform available, other mention lack of money for internet and low literacy on phone usage. Conclusion: The finding from this study shows that mobile technology in Rwanda is still in low usage, while it has the potential to increase access to sexual and reproductive health information and services among adolescents in Rwanda. There are several barriers that need to be addressed to make mobile-based interventions more effective. These barriers include limited access to mobile devices and internet connectivity, lack of digital literacy skills and publicity.