The Effect of Education on Blind Women's Empowerment in Reproductive Health: a Quasi-experimental Survey.

As blind women have usually been known as a group at risk, they should be necessarily considered to a larger extent in health consulting programs. Therefore, the present survey was aimed to investigate blind women empowerment toward sexual and reproductive health care. A quasi-experimental study was conducted on all 26 blind women covered by the Blind Society in the Azerbaijan province. A researcher-made questionnaire was run to collect data using an interview that included knowledge, attitude and behavior items. Intervention was done in two days, and all participants were followed-up for two weeks after intervention. Subjects had a mean age of 36.84±9.8 years. Overall, 42.3% of them were blind women and 57.7% had low vision. Women knowledge score about menstrual health, healthy fertility, sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy was 2.7±1.03, 1.2±0.9, 2.4±0.81 and 3.6±1.2, respectively before intervention, and it has increased significantly to 3.7± 0.51, 2.±0.7, 3.7±0.45 and 4.8±0.32, respectively after intervention (p<0.0001). In brief, results revealed that, on average, subjects' attitude was also remarkably better, as the score rose from 21.07±3.17 before intervention to 25.26±3.24 after interventions (p<0.0001). It seems that participants were poorly aware of reproductive health, but providing education on reproductive and sexual health was likely to be useful for this group; moreover, it should be prioritized in joint programs of medical universities and welfare institutions.