The Rural-to-Urban Migrants’ Awareness of Their Reproductive Health Rights in Yunnan, China

Context: the current reproductive health services for the rural-to-urban migrants (RUMs) need to be urgently improved in Yunnan and China. During the initial phase of improving access to and quality of reproductive health services for migrants in Yunnan, a path-breaking step was taken to understand awareness of clients’ rights amongst the RUMs in an urban Yunnan for exploring the extent of awareness of reproductive health rights (RHRs) amongst the RUMs, and examining its associated factors and possible determinants. Methods: in the year 2006, 519 migrants who had lived in Xishan County, an urban area of Kunming City, Yunan Province, for more than three months, aged 18~49, were interviewed by semi-structured questionnaire. Results: the majority of the RUMs (56.6%) lacked awareness of the RHRs. Significant difference were recognized in the awareness of the RHRs among the subgroups of the RUMs by sex, age, martial status, education, monthly income, occupation, and exposure to media (P<0.05), generally speaking, the higher socio-economical and educational level, the higher awareness of the RHRs. The regression analysis revealed that the variables significantly affected the RUMs’ awareness of RHRs includes education, occupation, and friends’ support, and knowledge of reproductive health related preventive practices. Conclusions: advocacy and educational campaign targeting migrants to arouse awareness of the RHRs should be conducted immediately. Further study is needed to better figure out the interesting connection between awareness of the RHRs and knowledge of reproductive health related preventive practices.