The spread of HIV, among youth in Gabon and Cameroon, is believed to be driven by unsafe heterosexual intercourse. However, no research has been done to investigate the predicting factors of risk sexual behaviors among the youth of the two countries. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the predicting factors of highrisk sexual behaviors among 15-24 aged youth from Gabon and Cameroon.
Methods: This study used nationally representative datasets from Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) of Cameroon (2011) and Gabon (2012). The study variables: non-spousal sex, multiple sexual partnerships, and paid sex were managed based on the MEASURE DHS online tools for HIV/AIDS survey indicators database. A total of 14,880 youth, of which 9511 (63.91%) from Cameroon and 5369 (36.08%) from Gabon were taken by probability proportional to size. SPSS version 22 was used to run a binary multivariate logistic regression.
Results: Of all the respondents, 67.9% of Cameroonian and 81.0% of Gabonese youth had history of sexual intercourse before the survey. Despite the difference by gender, 17.4% of Cameroonian and 21.3% of Gabonese youth had multiple sexual partners. Similarly, 33.9% of Cameroonian and 57.3% Gabonese youth reported non-spousal sex.