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. 2024 Jul 19;4(7):e0003408.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pgph.0003408. eCollection 2024.

Who seeks care after intimate partner violence in Cameroon? sociodemographic differences between a hospital and population sample of women

Mark T Yost  1 , Kevin J Blair  1 , McKayla Poppens  1 , Michelle Mallahi  1 , Lauren Eyler Dang  2 , Rasheedat Oke  1 , Melissa Carvalho  1 , Georges Alain Etoundi-Mballa  3 , Alan Hubbard  2 , Marquise Kouo Ngamby  4 , Sithombo Maqungo  5   6 , Kudzai Chironga  5   6 , Sandra I McCoy  7 , Alain Chichom-Mefire  8 , Catherine Juillard  1 , Salome Maswime  5 , Fanny Nadia Dissak Delon  9
Affiliations

Who seeks care after intimate partner violence in Cameroon? sociodemographic differences between a hospital and population sample of women

Mark T Yost et al. PLOS Glob Public Health. .

Abstract

Introduction: Little is known regarding health care seeking behaviors of women in sub-Saharan Africa, specifically Cameroon, who experience violence. The proportion of women who experienced violence enrolled in the Cameroon Trauma Registry (CTR) is lower than expected.

Methods: We concatenated the databases from the October 2017-December 2020 CTR and 2018 Cameroon Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) into a singular database for cross-sectional study. Continuous and categorical variables were compared with Wilcoxon rank-sum and Fisher's exact test. Multivariable logistic regression examined associations between demographic factors and women belonging to the DHS or CTR cohort. We performed additional classification tree and random forest variable importance analyses.

Results: 276 women (13%) in the CTR and 197 (13.1%) of women in the DHS endorsed violence from any perpetrator. A larger percentage of women in the DHS reported violence from an intimate partner (71.6% vs. 42.7%, p<0.001). CTR women who experienced IPV demonstrated greater university-level education (13.6% vs. 5.0%, p<0.001) and use of liquid petroleum gas (LPG) cooking fuel (64.4% vs. 41.1%, p<0.001). DHS women who experienced IPV reported greater ownership of agricultural land (29.8% vs. 9.3%, p<0.001). On regression, women who experienced IPV using LPG cooking fuel (aOR 2.55, p = 0.002) had greater odds of belonging to the CTR cohort while women who owned agricultural land (aOR 0.34, p = 0.007) had lower odds of presenting to hospital care. Classification tree variable observation demonstrated that LPG cooking fuel predicted a CTR woman who experienced IPV while ownership of agricultural land predicted a DHS woman who experienced IPV.

Conclusion: Women who experienced violence presenting for hospital care have characteristics associated with higher SES and are less likely to demonstrate factors associated with residence in a rural setting compared to the general population of women experiencing violence.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. IPV classification tree variable analysis.
On the classification tree, a branch to the right indicates a “yes” response to the bolded prompt while a branch to the left indicates a “no” response. IPV = intimate partner violence, LPG = liquid petroleum gas, DHS = 2018 Cameroon Demographic and Health Survey, CTR = Cameroon Trauma Registry.
Fig 2
Fig 2. IPV random forest variable importance.
The figure indicates that excluding the LPG cooking fuel variable from the random forest model would result in the greatest loss of accuracy. Other variables of importance for maintaining model accuracy include ownership of agricultural land and age. These variables are of the greatest importance when predicting belonging to the CTR or DHS cohorts. LPG = liquid petroleum gas.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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