Background: Incidence and prevalence of reproductive health difficulties have been shown to be higher among younger people. In Ghana, youthfriendly sexual and reproductive health services and facilities are very limited. The study aimed at examining the friendliness of sexual and reproductive health service delivery and utilization. Methods: Across sectional design with both qualitative and quantitative methods was conducted to examine the friendliness and utilization of reproductive health services among youth in the Kwadaso Sub-Metro of Ashanti Region, Ghana. A multi-stage stratified sampling was used to enroll 170 youth (150 in-school and 20 out of school youth) aged 10 - 24years. Data analysis involved descriptive statistics using SPSS software version 20. Results: Findings demonstrated that out of the 150 in-school youth sampled, 56% ever had a boyfriend or girlfriend, however, about one third(39.3%) did not recall the length of stay with partner, 58% have heard about sexual reproductive health services offered in the study area. A total of 55.8% of all categories of youth had used at least one or more reproductive health service before. Findings again revealed that 37.2% and 44% respectively of youth who had used sexual reproductive health considered the services received at a facility to be very friendly and friendly, yet, a few 18.6% indicated unfriendliness with services received at the facility. Conclusion: An integrative and comprehensive approach is required to scale up youth utilization of sexual reproductive health services especially facility based. This requires baseline survey of youth users of reproductive health services and the quality of services offered.
Introduction: The patient's perception of quality of care is fundamental to utilization of health services. Health utilization would partly depend on clients' perception of the quality of care. Methods: A cross-sectional study involving health clients (18 to 70 years) who accessed health services in the Bantama sub-metro in the Kumasi metropolis was conducted. A total of 400 clients were recruited from ten health facilities for the study. Data was collected through interviewing using semi-structured questionnaires using SPSS and analyzed into descriptive and inferential statistics with STATA 11. Results: Majority of subscribers assessed healthcare with their National Health Insurance (NHI) cards. Eight percent (8%) had never accessed healthcare with their NHIS cards. Respondents' reasons included not falling sick and low quality of healthcare under the NHIS. Respondents 216 (54%) indicated delays in seeing a doctor, getting laboratories done, and accessing health care as a whole. Seventy-four percent (74%) of the entire population attributed both NHIS and cash and carry systems as the payment methods associated with delays in health facilities. Clients who viewed the overall the quality of health provision as good or very good were more likely to access healthcare with NHIS card as compared to those who rated the overall health provision as poor or very poor (OR=2.1; p<0.01). Conclusion: Clients' perceptions and experiences with quality of health provision influence their utilization of healthcare under the NHIS scheme. Increased enrolment in the scheme should be supported with provision of quality services to enhance clients' satisfaction.