More than 40% of children in parts of Africa have experienced physical violence

doi:10.1136/bmj.b1953

Published 12 May 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b1953
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;338:b1953

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More than 40% of children in parts of Africa have experienced physical violence

Roger Dobson

¹ Abergavenny

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

One in 10 children in some parts of Africa have been victimsof both physical and sexual violence, shows research that surveyedmore than 20 000 young people in five countries. And more than40% of the children had experienced physical violence duringthe previous 12 months, the research found (Bulletin of theWorld Health Organisation doi:10.2471/BLT.07.047423).

The researchers also found an association between exposure toviolence (defined by a positive response to the questions "Duringthe past 12 months how many times were you involved in a physicalfight" or "Have you ever been physically forced to have sexualintercourse?") and children’s behaviour with adverse effectson health, including suicidal ideation, cigarette and alcoholuse, drug use, multiple sex partners, and a history of sexuallytransmitted infections (P $≤$ 0.05 for all associations).