Publication:

Contraceptive practices: an experience from ever married women in a city of Maharashtra, India

Background The single most important problem that India is facing now is the uncontrolled growth of population. In today’s scenario, fertility control is the most important way to check high population growth. In spite of availability of a wide range of contraceptives and mass media campaigns and IEC programs, the population control remains a distant dream to achieve.

Objectives 1) To determine prevalence of contraceptive acceptance and the type of contraceptive used. 2) To identify factors influencing the contraceptive acceptance pattern in the study area. 3) To assess the reasons for not accepting contraceptive methods by ever married women.

Methods A community based cross sectional descriptive study was conducted from January 2011 to June 2011 at Nanded city in Maharashtra state over 790 ever married women from 15-49 years age group with 2 stage sampling technique.

Results Prevalence of contraceptive use among study subjects was 483 (64.41%). Tubectomy 388 (80.33%) was method of choice for family planning accepted by the couples. There was significant association between contraceptive practice and age, type of family, education, socioeconomic status, age at marriage, years of marriage and no. of children of study subject. Most common reasons behind not using contraceptive were family not completed 100 (37.45%).

Conclusions Female tubectomy is still a method of choice among all contraceptives. Various socio-demographic and reproductive variables had impact on contraceptive practices. Majority couples not using contraceptive desire to have children to complete family.