Factors associated with Access to Sexual and Reproductive Health Services during COVID-19 Pandemic among Female Immigrant Workers in Thailand
Keywords:
Sexual and reproductive health, female migrant workers, access to health care, migrant healthAbstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted Samut Sakhon in Thailand, home to the second-highest number of migrant workers from Myanmar. This has led to decreased contraceptive access, unsafe abortions, postponed procedures, decreased sexual health education, gender-based violence, mental health issues, and increased unintended pregnancies. This cross-sectional study aimed to explore factors associated with access to sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services among female migrant workers (FMWs) from Myanmar in Samut Sakhon, Thailand, who were recruited by purposive sampling. The data were collected through a questionnaire from May to July 2021. Descriptive statistics, ANOVA, and ANCOVA were used to analyze the data. More than half of Myanmar FMWs in our study did not receive SRH services from public hospitals (60.78%), or private clinics or hospitals (63.38%). Furthermore, most of them cannot read and write Thai (84.77%). The factors associated with access to SRH services were marital status (P<0.05), education (P<0.05), monthly income (P<0.001), and daily expenses (P<0.05). The important finding indicated that the top three reasons that participants chose not to use SRH services were: services were available only during working hours (54.32%), unfriendly healthcare workers (40.00%), long distance to the health center, and difficulty traveling to the health center (35.45%). Access to SRH services is limited among Myanmar FMWs due to their education level, monthly income, and daily expenses. Our recommendations to overcome these barriers should include having friendly healthcare workers, free services, and services available after working hours. Additionally, SRH clinics should be in or near migration sites to allow for easy transportation.
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