PREVALENCE AND RISK FACTORS OF CONSANGUINEOUS MARRIAGE IN SELECTED AREA
F. Afrin Farha and G. Chandralega*
ABSTRACT
India is one of the largest countries in Asia with many subpopulations based on geography, language, religion, and caste. People would not alter their traditional and cultural habits, even after personal modernization. One of the traditional rituals is intrafamilial marriage. Consanguineous marriage, inbreeding, intra family union and endogamy are commonly called as cousin marriage. Consanguinity is a marriage between two people who share their mutual ancestors and are biologically related. In the present study, convenience sample of 500 married women was personally interviewed using a structured questionnaire in Ramanathapuram district to determine the prevalence of consanguineous marriages. Nearly, 279 were found to be a consanguineous pair among the selected population and 221 were found to be a non-consanguineous pair. In the selected population, consanguineous was 1.79 percent of the couple and non-consanguineous were 2.26percent of the couple. The system-wise congenital anomalies with consanguinity are depicted. The frequency of consanguineous is still high, so it seems necessary to design and implement special preventive interventions including multi-level educational programs in order to address the problem.
Keywords: Intra family Marriage, Consanguinity, Prevalence.
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