Paper Title
Factors Associated with Rural-Urban Migration and its Associated Health Hazards on the Female Adolescent in Kumasi Metropolis
Abstract
The living and working environment of migrants and their access to healthcare services induce good or poor health.This study was conducted to assess the factors associated with rural-urban migration and its associated health hazards among female adolescents. A sample size of two hundred (200) was chosen in which all responded to questionnaires comprising closed-ended questions which were distributed to gather data from the respondents after which it was analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20. The utilised three causes of rural-urban migration thus political, economic and socio-cultural. The study revealed that political situations such as regional inequality (65.4%) and ethnic conflicts (78.2%) whereas economic factors such as lack of amenities (82.3%), lack of employment in rural communities (77.4%), lack of education (74%), and poverty (85.3%) as well as socio-cultural factors such as divorced parents (65.6%), media influence (79.1%), family conflicts (59.4%) and appealing urban informal sector (65.2%) are major causes of migration. Respondents’ encountered challenges such as poor remuneration for services (87.2%), being maltreated by a colleague or worker (69%), sleeping in open space (73.3%), harassment by task force (71.4%) and teenage pregnancies (58.5%). The study concluded that the three variables plays a key role in adolescent migration and when they travel they end up getting involved in serious health hazardous behaviours such as rapes as well as physical and psychological harassments’. The study therefore recommends that vocational training of the rural people on small scale industries (non-farm) activities that could generate an income for the rural household should be introduced.
Keywords - Rural. Urban, Migration, Females, health haards