Risk Behaviors of Street Children in Dhaka City, Bangladesh: A Cross Sectional Study

Background: In Bangladesh, a lot of children are suffering from human right deprivation of all forms. In addition, they are exposed to the severe form of physical and mental violence at home, in the work place, and the public places. The nature and extent of violence against children are increasing day by day. Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. There are about one million street children living and working on the street of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Objectives: To assess the risk behaviors of the street children in Dhaka city of Bangladesh. Methods: This cross-sectional descriptive study was carried out to determine the health-related risk behaviors for food, clothing and shelter of street children in Dhaka city. The duration of the study period is January 2010 to June 2010. The target population is street children of Dhaka city. During data collection the researcher able to interview 100 respondents. Result: Among the respondents, 83 respondents were staying alone in Dhaka city. The reason for staying alone concludes that 19.3% left their house as they were beaten, for step-parents, 3.6% did not like to go to school, 14.4% to earn money, 15.7% no one to take care, 14.5% for the poverty, 4.8% came with friends , 1.1% came with relative, and 3,6% for the other reasons. Distribution of the respondents by the habit of eating waste food; showed that 10% of them do not eat waste foods, 38% sometimes and 52% had the habit of eating waste food. Distribution of the respondents by a frequency of physical assaults showed that majority 63.9% had the history of occasional physical assault, 36.6% are being often physically assaulted. Among the 53 respondents, 37.7% had first sexual experience at or below 12 years and 62.3% at or above 13 years of age. About sexual experience, the majority (53%) had this experience: among them, all the female street children were included. The study showed that among 53 respondents, 86.8% were not using the condom. Among the respondents 32.2% were reported that they were harassed by the unknown person, 16.9% by police, 11.3% by friends, and 9.4% by co-worker 7.5% by relatives and the rest by others. Among the respondent's 27% of the street children's were engaging in paper/garbage collection, 7% were kuli, 10% had taken their job as selling newspaper, 7% cleaner in WASA and 3% were engaging in picking other man's pocket. The rest were involved in begging and selling flowers. Conclusion: The finding of this study suggests that the street children are extremely vulnerable in terms of their health needs and health care-seeking behaviors. So both the Public and private sectors need to take proper steps for providing services for common physical ailments, reproductive health education, and awareness raising and surveillance of STD/HIV/AIDS.