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A cross-sectional study design was used to assess sexual-risk behaviour and HIV-preventive practices among students at Hawassa University, Ethiopia, in 2009. Among 1 220 students eligible for the study, approximately 29% reported experience of sex (36.3% of the males and 9.3% of the females). Of the total sexually active respondents, 67.1% had begun sexual activity while still in secondary school. For the previous 12-month period, 42.1% said they did not use condoms during the last sexual encounter, 46.1% of the males claimed having had sex with ‘bar ladies,’ and 39% said they had an active symptom of a sexually transmitted infection (STI). Logistic regression analysis demonstrated a significant association of higher-risk sexual practices in the previous year with being female and having an income greater than US$30/month. Having multiple sexual partners was strongly associated with being female, having a monthly income greater than US$30, a sexual debut before age 18 and before attending university, ever having had sex for the sake of money, active STI symptoms, and attending nightclubs. Overall, the students reported sexual practices that were considerably unprotected; we surmise that this likely exposed approximately two-fifths to STIs and nearly 10% to unplanned pregnancy. We conclude that to alter university students’ sexual-risk behaviour, a great deal of relevant intervention should be carried out during earlier school years, and the observed link between a greater frequency of sexual-risk behaviour and higher income needs to be investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Background: Health management information system (HMIS) is a system whereby health data are recorded, stored, retrieved and processed to improve decision-making. HMIS data quality should be monitored routinely as production of high quality statistics depends on assessment of data quality and actions taken to improve it. Thus, this study assessed accuracy of the routine HMIS data.Methods: Facility based cross-sectional study was conducted in Southern Nations Nationalities and People's region in 2017. Document review was done in 163 facilities of different levels. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) for windows version 20 was used to perform data analysis. Data accuracy was presented in terms of mean and standard deviation of data verification factor.Results: Though inaccuracy was noted for all data elements, 96.9 and 84.7% of facilities reported institutional maternal death and skilled birth attendance within acceptable range respectively while confirmed malaria (45.4%), antenatal care fourth visit (46.6%), postnatal care (55.2%), fully immunized (55.8%), severe acute malnutrition (54.6%) and total malaria (50.3%) were reported accurately only by about half of facilities. Antenatal care fourth visit was over reported by 24% while total malaria was under reported by 28%. Reasons for variations included technical, behavioral and organizational factors.Conclusions: Majority of facilities over reported services while under reporting diseases. Data quality should be monitored routinely against data quality parameters quantitatively and/or qualitatively to catch-up country's information revolution agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]