Poster session on Sexuality and reproductive health (1)

The concept of unmet need points to the gap between some women’s reproductive intensions and their contraceptive behaviour. It is a challenge to family planning programmes, to reach and serve these millions of women. It is imperative to understand the determinants of family planning practice for the people who are living in slum. The objectives of this study is to estimate the prevalence of unmet need for Family Planning among currently married women of reproductive age and determinants of unmet need for Family Planning residing at urban slums in India. This study utilizes the third round of National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3); first time has collected data from statistically representative of slums in India. Bivariate, Pearson’s chi-square test and multivariate techniques has been used to understand the unmet need for family planning among currently married women living in slums and non slums. The prevalence of unmet need for Family Planning was found to be 12.6 recent in slum and 6.3 percent in non-slum respectively. The significant association of unmet for family planning in non-slum was lower compare to slum areas. One an important result was found non-nuclear family had more unmet need for family planning as compare to nuclear family.

Reliance on unreliable traditional ways of birth control would always give psychological tension to a couple and debar them from leading healthy sexual life. However, in Assam, half of the total contraceptive users depend on traditional contraceptive methods. Thus, present paper attempts to find out the answer to this peculiarity by taking latest National Family Health Survey 2005-06 data. Bi-variate analyses show that most of the demographic and socio-economic characteristics of traditional method users are in-between users of modern spacing and terminal methods. Traditional method users are 31 years old and married for 13 years. Traditional method use is higher among Muslim, Bengali and backward castes women, compared to their counter parts. The burden of miss-timed and unwanted fertility is highest among the traditional method users. Multi-variate statistics shows that women with lesser education, lesser marital duration, from poorer economic condition, and speakers of Assamese and Bengali language are less likely to rely on traditional method. Further, women with lesser marital duration, younger and urban women are less likely to adopt terminal method. There is an urgent need to impart proper knowledge about traditional as well as modern effective contraceptive methods for healthy reproductive life.

Introduction: Around 68,000 deaths occur worldwide due to unsafe abortions while 97% of these deaths occur in developing countries. It is estimated that 25% of all clients are refused services in Bangladesh for various reasons.
Methods: The research was carried out between March 2009-October 2011 in 4 districts of Bangladesh. Methods included in-depth interviews with women (53) having MRs or attempted MRs and focus group discussions (24) with younger and older males and females of reproductive age.
Results: MR was viewed as sin from religious and social perspectives. This perception often resulted in huge delays in seeking MRs (i.e. beyond six months of gestation) and often led to clandestine careseeking from different formal and informal biomedical and traditional providers. Careseeking data showed around 61% of all careseeking was from non-formal sector, which included pharmacists, paramedics, homeopaths, herbalists, TBAs, other informal providers, and home remedies. Out of this non-formal careseeking, around 44% was with pharmacists and other informal providers, while 24% was with traditional providers.
Conclusion: Menstrual regulation is a professed need for women and their families. Judging from this context, it is important that policy makers try to create a better atmosphere for women to avail safe MR services.

Despite the amendment of Ghana’s abortion laws in 1985, aimed at increasing access to safe abortion services, these services are not readily available to most women. Abortion has consistently been an important contributor to maternal morbidity and mortality in Ghana. A situation some observers attribute to the sensitivity surrounding pregnancy terminations and the low knowledge about the abortion law and its nuances. Within this context, this paper explores the decision making process of females within the ages of 15-30 years who aborted their pregnancies. The study employed a qualitative research design with 28 females who sought their abortions at an NGO run clinic. Data for the study was analyzed using Mile’s and Huberman’s framework and the social ecological model as guides. Analysis of the interviews show that pragmatic concerns like economic difficulties, child spacing, fear of parental reaction, attitude of partners, impregnation by someone other than the regular partner and health concerns influenced participants in their abortion decisions. The low level of knowledge by participants about Ghana’s abortion laws also emerged as a strong theme. The study therefore concludes that although there are social, cultural and legal prohibitions regarding abortions, pragmatic concerns force some women to act contrary to them.

The present study aims to study the couple’s inconsistency with respect to their use of family planning and factor affecting their inconsistency. The data from National family Health Survey, 2005-06 has been used. Results from the study shows that, mismatching in reporting of current use is 20 percent. Reporting of use of male method, in 93 percent cases both reported same and in 4 percent cases only husband reported that he is using method and wife does not know about that. In 12 percent cases husband does not know that wife is using family planning. In 7 percent cases only wife is reporting that she is sterilized. From the logistic regression it is clear that, Odds of having mismatch are high in the couples who got married before 10 years as compared to those who marry recently in case of reporting of all methods and female methods; whereas in case of reporting of male methods it is showing reverse results. Likelihood of having mismatch is high in urban area. Education of the women has positive and significant effect on mismatching. Education of husband has positive effect on mismatching about male methods whereas it has negative effect on reporting of female methods. Odds of having mismatch are less in schedule tribe. As compared to poor class couple rich couples are more likely to misreport about male method use.

Contraceptive use is one of the most important determinants of fertility. Couple adopt contraception either to avoid all future births or to postpone the next birth. Very scanty work could be found out on the effect of age gap on contraceptive use and fertility behavior. In this paper an attempt has been made to explore the impact of age gap between spouse on the use of contraceptive and fertility behavior in Madhya Pradesh, where fertility level has been consistently higher and the overall contraceptive use is quite low. The dataset of National Family Health Survey (NFHS-III, 2005-2006) has been used for the present study. This study reveals that though the impact of age gap between spouses on contraceptive use is positive but its effect on the use of any temporary family planning method is negative. This implies that the use of any temporary family planning methods increases with decrease in the age gap between husband and wife. The level of fertility increases with increase in the age gap between husband and wife. Further there is decline in the level of fertility with increase in the educational attainment of husband and wife. Other relevant factors like age at marriage of women, exposure to mass media, religion and caste might also affect the relationship between age gap and fertility.

Sexual behaviour among young people is characterized by erratic, infrequent and unplanned sexual activities, a trend that exposes them to unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections including HIV. While sexual activity among young women begins early, contraceptive knowledge and use remain low. According to the Kenya Demographic & Health Survey, 2008-09, current contraceptive use (modern methods) among women aged 15-19 and 20-24 is 5% and 24% respectively. Existing communications were mainly targeted at married women, highlighting the need to limit family size or space births, thereby causing a disconnect with the youth whose needs are mainly to delay child bearing. To provide credible information that will dispel myths and misconceptions about modern family planning methods (MFPMs) and use, this paper seeks to: 1) understand method specific myths and misconceptions about MFPMs; 2) recommend appropriate approaches to inform behaviour change communication targeting young women.

The majority of existing studies on fertility regulation primarily seek to explain contraceptive practices and behaviour in terms of the individual’s or couple’s personal attributes, and household risk factors, neglecting the contextual, social and cultural environment in which the outcomes occur. Evidences regarding how contextual and community level factors influence contraceptive adoption are limited, especially in the developing countries. Using a multistage sampling design, data on contraceptive use and individual, household and community level information were collected from 1,348 women residing in an underdeveloped region of a rural area of West Bengal, India. Of all women in union about 88% were using one contraceptive method at the time of survey. Among them about 82% were using any modern method, while a minority (about 6%) were using any traditional method. The female sterilization was the most commonly used method (68% of women) followed by oral pill (17%). The preliminary results of multilevel binary logit analysis suggest that a significant community-level variation is present in contraceptive use. Village level developmental indicators and participation in community activities were found to be significantly associated with contraceptive use even after controlling the potential confounders.

Mass media has numerous functions in the society and the most prominent of these is information dissemination that can lead to changes in behavior, knowledge and practices of individuals towards certain matters such as family planning. In the context of the increasing prevalence of contraceptive use in the Philippines over the last 40 years (NDHS 2008), this paper hopes to provide inputs on the relationship between exposure to family planning (FP) messages in the tri-media (i.e. print, radio, and television) and use of contraceptives by Filipino women 15-49 years old. The data forms part of the 2008 Philippines National Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS). Bivariate and multivariate analyses were employed and Chi-square test of association was used to examine relationships between the variables. Results show that among the tri-media, television is most popular source of FP messages among Filipino women. A positive relationship exists between women’s exposure to FP messages in any of the tri-media and contraceptive use most especially on modern contraceptive methods. Albeit weak, women’s contraceptive use and exposure to FP messages in television and radio were significantly associated. Education was found to affects the relationship between exposure to FP messages in tri-media and contraceptive use.

This research aims to study the interval of first and second birth in Indonesia using the data of ever married women aged 15-49 years who have at least two children from the 2007 IDHS. It is found that the percentages of less than ideal first and second birth interval is highest among women in rural areas, whom first child died, first child female, who are poor, with no school/unfinished primary school, never used contraception whose religion is Kong Hu Chu and others. Ever used contraception, education and religion have statistically significant effects on first and second birth interval.