Factors that influence contraceptive use amongst women in Vanga health district, Democratic Republic of Congo.

Kangale Izale,Jean-Pierre L Fina,Indiran Govender,John Tumbo

doi:10.4102/phcfm.v6i1.599

Abstract

BackgroundContraception is often necessary in order to plan for children and without it there is a risk of unplanned pregnancies. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, this often results in abortions by untrained persons with resultant morbidity and mortality.AimTo investigate the factors that influence contraceptive use amongst women of childbearing age in the Vanga health zone.MethodsCross-sectional survey using interviewer-administered questionnaires.ResultsOf the 384 women recruited, a majority (46.1%) were in the 31–40 year age group; 52% had reached primary school and 88% did not have formal employment. One hundred and forty of the participants reported current use of contraception, with 60% of them using modern methods of contraception; 36.1% of them had begun using contraception before the age of 20; and the most common methods were oral contraceptive pills and injection, each accounting for 22.9%. There was variation in the duration of contraceptive use and the main reason for using contraception was to space children. Of the participants, 20.7% had been using contraception for more than two years. Seventy-seven (31.5%) of the women reported they did not use contraception because of a fear of side effects. Forty-four (18%) reported that they are unable to afford contraception, 38 (15.6%) had husbands who disapproved of contraceptive usage, 26 (10.6%) had a fear of infertility, 18 (7.4%) practised a religion that did not allow them to use contraception and 12 of the women (4.9%) did not use contraception because it was unavailable to them.ConclusionBarriers to contraception in our study were fears of side effects and infertility, cost, male partner's objection, unavailability of contraception and religious beliefs.

Highlights

Women worldwide are exposed to the risk of unwanted and unintended pregnancies as a result of ineffective or nonuse of contraception
Contraceptive practices entail contraceptive use or non-use, discontinuation of contraception and/or failure to use any of the contraceptive methods according to a specified set of guidelines.[3]
A demographic and health survey conducted in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) during 2007 showed that amongst sexually-active women, contraception use was as follows: 20% for women younger than 20, 39% for those aged 20–29, 24% for those aged 30–39 and 17% for those aged 40–49.11 This differed from our findings since younger women in the Vanga region are more aware of HIV and the benefits of contraception than five years ago, when the survey was conducted

Summary

Introduction

Women worldwide are exposed to the risk of unwanted and unintended pregnancies as a result of ineffective or nonuse of contraception. Almost 137 million women who want to avoid pregnancy do not use any method of family planning.[4,5] Of the 210 million pregnancies that occur each year, almost 80 million are unplanned. Approximately 42 million pregnant women seek termination of their unplanned pregnancy. Of the 20 million women who undergo unsafe abortions by untrained staff, 67 000 die annually. Almost all of these deaths (99%) occur in underdeveloped countries.[6]. Contraception is often necessary in order to plan for children and without it there is a risk of unplanned pregnancies. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, this often results in abortions by untrained persons with resultant morbidity and mortality

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