Vol 11, No 3 (September 2017)

Original Articles

  • XML | PDF | downloads: 318 | views: 667 | pages: 119-127

    Objective: To find out adult views on adolescent sexualities in Zimbabwe and how adults construct sexual cultures that deny adolescence access to sex.
    Materials and methods: The paper uses qualitative methodologies, with purposively selected parents and key informants. A total of ten in depth interviews, four focus groups and six key informant interviews with purposively sampled male and female respondents were conducted. Key informants included a headmaster, teacher, social worker, nurses and a member of traditional healers association.
    Results: Parents that were interviewed denied that their adolescent children were sexually active. This denial of adolescent sexuality was seen throughout the interviews. The denial of adolescent sexuality was linked to the other themes that emerged including sexual surveillance and sexual communication, school pregnancy, STIs and sexual education, and adult anxiety on adolescent sex.
    Conclusion: The denial of youth sexuality has serious impacts on youths’ access to information and ability to protect themselves from sexually transmitted diseases and HIV. We argue that government policies and lack of comprehensive sex education in schools are based on this denial of adolescent sexuality and should be addressed.

  • XML | PDF | downloads: 343 | views: 657 | pages: 128-137

    Objective: This study aimed to investigate the relationship between factors related to divorce request with mental health among divorce applicant women in order to understand the effect of these factors on women's mental health.
    Materials and methods: This study was a cross-sectional study performed on 434 divorce applicant women who referred to legal medicine department of Ahvaz in 2013 based on convenience sampling. Information was collected by using researcher made questionnaire for factors affecting divorce and symptom checklist-25 (SCL-25) standard questionnaire. The data were analyzed using SPSS ver.18.
    Results: The results showed that among the social factors, life skills and communication, family and individual factors had a significant relationship with mental health among divorce applicant women (p < 0.05). No relationship was seen with economic and cultural factors affecting divorce request (p > 0.05).
    Conclusion: Regarding the negative effects of various causative factors of divorce on mental health of women including social, life skills, communication, family and individual factors strategies for prevention and reduction of these factors should be seriously considered for prevention and early treatment of mental health problems. These strategies include counseling before marriage, after marriage and during the divorce process.

  • XML | PDF | downloads: 323 | views: 586 | pages: 138-145

    Objective: Population and its corresponding problems are among multidimensional and complicated issues of human communities and their related features are the basis for making any plan or policy. Fertility, as one of the principle components of population growth, is an issue that has always been taken into consideration and extensive research has been carried out to recognize factors affecting on it. Therefore, the authors decided to study the most important factors influencing fertility rate in Iran by conducting a longitudinal study and considering the effect of various time periods on its population changes.
    Materials and methods: This is a descriptive-analytic study. Its required information is a combination of cross-sectional and time series data (panel data) that were extracted from 1966 to 2013 from Iran’s population categorized by the country’s 24 provinces and from statistical yearbooks of Statistical Center of Iran and Organization of Civil Registration. The final estimations were made using Eviews 7 and STATA 12 software. Findings showed that variables of marriage, women’s level of education, unemployment, population policies, Sunni population, economic policies and annual expenses of households have influenced the fertility rate.
    Results: Based on the research results, marriage and women’s level of education respectively had the most positive and the most negative effects on the fertility rate. Then, unemployment, family planning policies, policies of paying cash subsidies and total annual household expenses had reverse effects on the fertility rate and the policies of paying cash subsidies and Sunni population had positive effects on the fertility rate.
    Conclusion: In order to make policies of increasing fertility rate effective by governmental and politicians’ planning, more attention should be paid to providing conditions for marriage and reducing unemployment.

     

  • XML | PDF | downloads: 259 | views: 547 | pages: 146-151

    Objective: Recent advances in non-invasive prenatal diagnosis (NIPD) through cell free fetal DNA (cffDNA) has highlighted cffDNA purification as a critical initial step. Herein, we aimed to compare the efficiency of one proposed protocol with two commercial kits for isolation of cffDNA.

    Materials and methods: cffDNA was isolated from whole blood of 50 normal pregnancies using one proposed manual protocol compared with QIAamp DNA Blood Mini and Bioneer Kits. Methylated DNA immunoprecipitation real time polymerase chain reaction (MeDIP-Real time PCR) was performed to quantify three fetal specific sequences.

    Results: Maximum cffDNA quantity was obtained by suggested protocol (248.79 ± 14.07 ng/µl) and the best quality was achieved by Bioneer Kit (OD ratio: 260/280 nm/nm: 1.69 ± 0.09, 260/230 nm/nm: 1.15 ± 0.13) (p < 0.001). Enrichment of fetal specific sequences was significantly higher when proposed protocol was used to isolate cffDNA (p = 0.01).

    Conclusion: Inhibitory effect of NaI on nucleases and double digestion of DNA associated proteins may be the main reasons behind the superiority of suggested protocol. Significantly higher amplification of fetal specific sequences in suggested protocol would be a strong evidence on recovery of small fetal fragments as demonstrated with its maximum total DNA quantity and amplification in different PCR reactions.

  • XML | PDF | downloads: 208 | views: 456 | pages: 152-158

    Objective: To investigating formation or non-formation of bladder flap at Cesarean section on the complications during and after surgery.
    Materials and methods: This is a double-blind clinical trial study conducted during February 2014 to May 2015 on 64 pregnant women with gestational age of 36 weeks or more who were delivered by Cesarean section for the first time. They were randomly divided into two groups (intervention group: non-formation of bladder flap; control group: formation of bladder flap). The time to cut out the baby by Cesarean section, total duration of operation, bladder injury, intraoperative bleeding, hematocrit changes expected prior to during and following operation, postoperative pain, macroscopic and microscopic hematuria, postoperative complications and duration of  hospitalization were compared between two groups. The data were analyzed with SPSS version 16 using and statistics tests. p < 0.05 was considered significant.
    Results: Time to cut out the baby for the intervention group (124.9 ± 40.5 seconds and for control group 155.1 ± 42.9 seconds) and total duration of the operation (intervention group: 27.7 ± 5.2 min and control group: 34 ± 4.73 min) were significantly different (p = 0.000). Number of gauze consumption during operation and postoperative hematocrit drop in the intervention group was significantly lower in the intervention group compared the control group (p = 0.000). The postoperative pain score in the intervention group (4.8 ± 1.1) and in control group (6.3 ± 0.9) were significantly different (p = 0.000).
    Conclusion: Omission of the bladder flap at Cesarean section leads to short-term benefits such as reducing the time to cut out the fetus, duration of surgery, decreasing postoperative bleeding and lowering pain.

  • XML | PDF | downloads: 269 | views: 664 | pages: 159-164

    Objective: To anticipate the type of childbirth according to the health belief model.
    Materials and methods: The present cross-sectional research was conducted on 222 primiparous women visiting the healthcare center in Khorram Abad. A combination of simple randomization and clustering was used to do the sampling. The data collection instrument was a validated four-part questionnaire the first part of which contained demographic information. The second part was comprised of awareness questions while the third dealt with the constructs of the health belief model. The final part consisted of the behavioral intention derived from the logical action theory. SPSS 16 was used to statistically analyze the data and the significance level was set at p ˂ 0.05.
    Results: The average age of the participants was 27.40 ± 6.07 years. Intention to go for a vaginal birth showed to be significantly correlated with awareness, perceived sensitivity, intensity, barriers and benefits (p ˂ 0.001) as well as self-efficacy (p = 0.025). The best predictor of the type of childbirth turned out to be the perceived barriers (OR = 1.153, p ˂ 0.001) and only then awareness (OR = 1.108, p ˂ 0.001).
    Conclusion: Strategies to remove the barriers of preferring vaginal childbirth, raising women’s awareness of the side effects of C-section and the benefits of vaginal birth, strategies to enhance women’s beliefs in their capability of natural childbirth can be used to reduce the prevalence of unnecessary C-sections.

     

  • XML | PDF | downloads: 640 | views: 1285 | pages: 165-173

    Objective: Early motherhood and its impact on mothers, children, families and communities is a prevalent health challenge in developing countries that needs to be urgently explored. The aim of this study was exploring the challenges encountered by Iranian adolescent mothers during the transition to motherhood.
    Materials and methods: Inductive conventional content analysis approach was used in this qualitative study. Face to face in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with 16 Iranian teenage mothers in the Kerman province of Iran from March to December2016. Data collection continued until the point of data saturation and MAXQDA software was utilized in the analysis of the data.
    Results: Six main categories increasing burden of responsibility, experiencing physical problems, receiving insufficient support, inefficiency in maternal role, emotional and mental distress; and role conflict and 18 sub-categories were extracted from the data analysis.
    Conclusion: The findings of this study showed that adolescent mothers experience many physical, psychological, mental and social challenges. Therefore, it is expedient that special attention and care support is made available to them by health care providers. A comprehensive understanding of the challenges encountered by adolescent mothers, will aid the development of culturally appropriate health promotion guidelines and strategie.

Case Reports