Abstract
Significant proportion of maternal deaths in Nigeria is due to complications of unsafe abortions, and these abortions are responses to unwanted pregnancies that could have been prevented by effective contraceptive programming. Despite intense programmatic efforts by the Nigerian government and various non-governmental agencies to reverse the trend, there has been little evidence to suggest a systematic improvement in these indicators. A household random survey of 1,528 women aged between 15-49 years was undertaken at Amukpe community in Nigeria, to determine their knowledge, practice and perceptions of contraception. The results showed that 86.2% of the respondents had secondary or less level of education and 19.2% of the respondents were single parents. The level of contraceptive awareness was high (92.3%) and 88% of the respondents became aware of contraception in the last 14 years. Friends/relatives (40.6%), followed by nurses (31.7%) and then doctors (17.3%) were the common sources of contraceptive awareness. The most widely known contraceptive methods were injectables, condoms, POP and OCP. The specific knowledge of emergency contraception was poor. The factors associated with low contraceptive usage were poor level of training and ineffective conveyance of relevant information to clients by health personnel, low literacy levels, extremes of reproductive age and extremes of parity. Others were fear of side effects, lack of knowledge, and lack of spousal consent. Contraceptive usage remain poor despite high level of awareness. Effective educational and counseling interventions are likely to improve providers' and consumers' knowledge and subsequent uptake of contraceptive usage.
Highlights
Available data indicates that Nigeria currently has one of the highest rates of maternal mortality in the world.[1]
It is in evidence that 40% of these maternal deaths are due to complications of unsafe abortions[2], and abortion is a response to an unwanted pregnancy that could have been prevented by effective contraceptive programming
Despite intense programmatic efforts by the Nigerian government and various non-governmental agencies to reverse the trend, there has been little evidence to suggest a systematic improvement in these indicators
Summary
Available data indicates that Nigeria currently has one of the highest rates of maternal mortality in the world.[1] It is in evidence that 40% of these maternal deaths are due to complications of unsafe abortions[2], and abortion is a response to an unwanted pregnancy that could have been prevented by effective contraceptive programming. Nigeria’s contraceptive prevalence rate is less than 13%. The situation is further compounded by the persisting challenge of high fertility rate of about 5.8% and an annual growth rate of 2.8% in face of a large population size of about 140 million persons.[3] Despite intense programmatic efforts by the Nigerian government and various non-governmental agencies to reverse the trend, there has been little evidence to suggest a systematic improvement in these indicators. Primary prevention, based on reducing the numbers of at-risk pregnancies through effective contraception, is an important approach to resolving the problem
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