Abstract:
Background: Approximately one million people contracts STIs every day and 50% of them are youth aged 15-24 years and above [2]. The situation in Tanzania is even worse, where about 2.2 million adults and children were estimated that have been infected with STIs including HIV/AIDS [4].

The crisis is noted to be severe particularly for youth whereby approximately 17% of children fewer than 15 years of age in Tanzania had been infected by STIs and about 50% of the STIs occur before the age of 29 years [4].

The study was conducted to determine the level of knowledge and practice among youth in Butiama district about sexually transmitted infections, and a total of 244 youth were involved in the study.

Method: A cross sectional study was conducted between 30 June to 12 July; 2020. July numbers of questionnaires were used to collect the data and were distributed among youth during the study period. There after the data were entered in Microsoft excel and analysed by using SPSS.

Results/Discussion: A total of 244 youth were recruited and agreed to participate in the study. About 82% of youth involved in this study declared that they knew STIs while only 18% didn’t know anything about STIs. The mostly mentioned STIs were gonorrhea, syphilis and HIV/AIDS. The knowledge of STIs among youth was quite low; some of the youth didn’t know some aspects related to STIs. About 34.4% youth thought that syphilis can be transmitted by insect bites and 44.7% said that STI can heal without treatments. About 34.4% said that STIs can be acquired by sharing shoes. 46.7% agreed that there is a vaccine for HIV/AIDS, while said that a person cured of gonorrhea cannot acquire it in future if he or she practices sexual intercourse with an infected person.

The practice of youth regarding STIs is poor as about 23% of participants said that have two sexual partners and 28.7% said that they have more than two sexual partners. 39.8% they said that don’t know how to use condom, and about 46.7% said that have been infected with STIs and among those only 14.3% got the treatment in hospital while 29.5% got the treatment in Pharmacies/Drug shops and 4.5% got the treatment from their friends. This indicates there is a high risk of causing antimicrobial resistance since youth are taking medications from their friends without and instructions from a physician or any medical practitioners.

Conclusion: Knowledge and practices regarding STIs among youth is quite low, and more risk factors were observed in those with more than two sexual partner.