Knowledge, Attitude and Practice of Contraception among Abortion Seekers in Benin City
Keywords:
Induced abortion, contraceptionAbstract
Background. In Nigeria, 12% of pregnancies end in induced abortion amounting to over 610,000 induced abortions annually, with a ratio of 25 per 1000 women of reproductive age. Majority of these abortions are unsafe. Effective contraception would no doubt prevent most unwanted pregnancies and the consequences of unsafe abortions.
Aim. To assess the knowledge, attitude and practice of contraception among abortion seekers in Benin City and to propose ways of improving knowledge and utilization of contraception, in order to prevent unwanted pregnancies.
Methodology: Cross-sectional questionnaire based survey of abortion seekers in selected clinics in Benin City from January1-June30 2006.
Results: A total of 423 women who sought abortion were interviewed. Majority (52.2%) were within the 21 – 25 age range. Majority of the women were single (82.3%), Christians (95.3%) and had secondary education (48.9%). Most of the women sought abortion on the ground that they were schooling (35.2%) or single (32.2%) while 16.8% believed abortion was a method of contraception A significant proportion (65.7%) of the women were aware of a modern method of contraception and 50.1% had ever used a modern method of contraception but only 35.9% were currently using a modern method of contraception. Post-abortion counselling did not seem to improve uptake of contraception.
Conclusion and Recommendation.
This study showed that the majority of abortion seekers in Benin City are youths and they do so because they are not ready for motherhood and although they have fair knowledge of contraception, the majority were not practicing contraception at the time of the study. There is an urgent need to step up contraceptive counseling skill for health workers for effective dissemination of information on contraception. There is need to overhaul the family health education system, including the integration of Planned Parenthood into health care delivery system at the primary health care level.
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