Prevalence and types of husband violence against women in AL Najaf AL Ashraf city, Iraq

Abstract

Background: Violence against women is a worldwide problem and intimate partner violence is the commonest form. It occurs in all societies, cultures and different religions. Objectives: To measure the prevalence, types and consequences of husband violence among a sample of women attending primary health care centers in AL-Najaf city. Methods and Materials: A cross-sectional descriptive study done on a sample of 323 women randomly selected from primary health care centers in AL-Najaf AL-Ashraf city beginning from 1st of April 2018 to 1st of February 2019. Data were collected using a modified version of the World Health Organization's questionnaire for the domestic violence. Before the data collection, the official agreements were taken from the general health directorate and the managers of primary health centers, and verbal consent from the participants, the questionnaire containing information about demographic factors and questions about types and frequency of the violence during whole life and the last 12 months. The information was analyzed using SPSS version 20. Results: The prevalence of lifetime intimate partner violence against women was 58.5% and the emotional violence is the commonest type of violence followed by physical and sexual violence (57%, 41.2% and 19.8% respectively). The prevalence of past - year violence was 45.6% also the emotional violence was the commonest form 43% followed by physical 25.2% and sexual violence 10.1%. Conclusions: More than half of the sample was victims of violence regardless of its type with the emotional violence being the commonest type of violence.