Unmet Need of Family Planning in Urban Slum of minority community in Kolkata: Is it any different?

Abstract

Introduction: India may boast of introducing a national programme for fertility control earlier than most countries had conceived it. But in the same breath we are yet to concede the fact that the ultimate objectives of such dreams remained largely unfulfilled. Unmet need for contraceptioncontinues to haunt us as being an unresolved riddle. The experts have been concerned about it and the dire necessity to address the problem was vouched in various National Programmes. Methodology-This cross sectional study was conducted among the parous Muslim women residing in an urban slum of Kolkata with the objective of estimating the prevalence and finding out the reasons responsible for unmet need in the community. Results- The prevalence of unmet need was 20.0%. It varied significantly betweenage groups below (35%) and above (13.3%) 24 years, between BPL (31.4%) and APL (6.7%) and between Joint (25.5%) and nuclear (5.6%) families. The AOR for joint families was 4.522 (95% C.I. 0.482 - 42.438). There was a statistically insignificant difference in the problem between the groups of women who had less than or equal to two children (19.6%) and those who had more than that (21.1%). But the difference that women with adequate spacing had the problem in greater numbers (44.4%) compared to those who did not (10.5%), was statistically significant. The commonest principal reason cited by the respondents was fear of side effects of the methods (38.5%). Conclusion- More in-depth qualitative enquiries are required to find out the reason of such contraceptive behavior of the minority community living in slums.