The prevalence of sexual violence during pregnancy in Iran and the world: a ‎systematic review and meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: Domestic violence during pregnancy is a public health crisis, because it affects both mother ‎and fetus simultaneously, resulting in irreversible consequences for mothers and their ‎newborns. This study was performed to determine the prevalence of sexual violence during ‎pregnancy in the world and Iran as meta-analysis.‎ METHODS: This study is a meta-analysis on the prevalence of sexual violence during pregnancy ‎in the world and Iran that was conducted on Persian and English published articles up to ‎‎2015. To this end, through searching the information by key words and their compounds at SID, Medlib, Irandoc, Google scholar, Pubmid, ‎ISI, Iranmedex, Scopus and Magiran, all related articles ‎were extracted independently by two trained researchers. The results of studies ana-lyzed using ‎the STATA and Spss16 software.‎ RESULTS: In the initial searching of 167 articles, 33 articles related to Iran, 40 articles related to ‎other parts of the world and totally 73 articles met inclusion criteria for study. The prevalence ‎of sexual violence during pregnancy were estimated in the world 17% (CI95%:15% -18%) and ‎in Iran 28% (CI95%: 23% -32%).The prevalence of sexual violence during pregnancy in Iran is ‎‎11 percent more than the world.‎ CONCLUSIONS: According to the present meta-analysis results, the prevalence of sexual violence ‎during pregnancy in Iran is high. Given that sexual violence during pregnancy causes damage to ‎the mother and infant, it is recommended that the relevant authorities with the implementation ‎of intervention and educational programs reduce the prevalence of sexual violence during ‎pregnancy.‎