Abstract
<p><strong>Objective: </strong>Family welfare program has met with only marginal success due to different levels of awareness and acceptance of methods of family planning in various socioeconomic groups. Unmet needs of family planning are more in tribal population of the country. With this background the study was done to assess the knowledge and practice of family welfare methods among tribal women and to associate the knowledge of family welfare methods with the selected demographic variables.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>A community based descriptive cross-sectional study was done. Reproductive aged women of 15-45 y were selected by convenient sampling method in the tribal area of Jawadhu hills.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Among 200 women, 188 (94%) of them had inadequate knowledge, 12(6%) had moderate and none of them had adequate knowledge and practice of family welfare methods. There was no significant association between the knowledge and practice of the family welfare methods and the selected demographic variables such as age, educational status and education of her husband, religion, occupation, income, number of living children as well as source of family welfare information.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>Use of contraceptive methods among tribal population is influenced by various factors. Health care provider should find the unmet needs of the individual tribal women before motivating them to adopt any suitable family planning methods to reduce the maternal complications.</p>
Highlights
The ruling Janata Government in 1977 developed a new population policy that was to be accepted not by compulsion but voluntarily regarding family welfare programme [1]
Socio economic and factors affecting the unmet needs among tribal women will go a long way in understanding the low level of contraceptive practices and would help formulate strategies to meet them
The frequency and percentage distribution of socio demographic variables of tribal women was shown in table 1
Summary
The ruling Janata Government in 1977 developed a new population policy that was to be accepted not by compulsion but voluntarily regarding family welfare programme [1]. Planning means that the practices that will help the individuals or couples to avoid unwanted births, bring about wanted births, regulate the intervals between pregnancies. Medical practitioners and public health workers in India have been reporting that most of the people do not utilize the family welfare methods effectively especially in rural as well as hilly regions [2]. India was the first country to launch a family planning programme in 1952 [3]. The changes were done to increase the acceptance of family planning methods [4]
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