Understanding Reproductive Illness among Women from Mumbai Slum: Some Methodological Issues

Maitrayee Mazumdar, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)
Niranjan Saggurti, Population Council

The International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), held at Cairo, Egypt in September 1994 made action plan for universal reproductive health services. The major challenge in developing countries is to persuade symptomatic cases to seek care from qualified practitioners. The study focuses to understand the interrelationship between the reported symptoms and clinical/laboratory tests pertaining to RTI/STI. Primarily, the study based on secondary data from National Family Health Survey-II (NFHS-II) and the Research and Intervention study in Sexual Health: theory to Action (RISHTA). The findings suggested that a significant proportion of women who were tested positive have not reported any of the five basic symptoms related to RTI/STI. With expanding the type of symptoms as in RISHTA project the sensitivity for the overall symptoms reported becomes high but at a lower specificity.