Awareness, use and associated factors of emergency contraceptive pills among women of reproductive age (15-49 years) in Tamale, Ghana

BMC Women's Health

Research Article

Monica NA Appiah¹  Winnifred A Mumuni¹  Anthony Amalba²  Victor Mogre² 

[1] Department of Allied Health Sciences, School of Medicine and Health Sciences, University for Development Studies, Tamale, Ghana;Department of Human Biology, School of Medicine and Health Sciences, University for Development Studies, P. O. Box TL 1883, Tamale, Ghana;

关键词: Emergency contraceptive pills (ECPs);    Availability;    Affordability;    Cultural;    Religious;    Women of reproductive age;    Tamale;    Ghana;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1472-6874-14-114

 received in 2014-05-06, accepted in 2014-09-18,  发布年份 2014

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundEmergency contraceptive pills (ECPs) are one of the means by which women can use after intercourse to prevent pregnancy. ECPs can be used to reduce the prevalence of unwanted pregnancies and unsafe abortions. This study investigated awareness and use of ECPs among reproductive age (15-49 years) women in Tamale, Ghana. Factors associated with the use of ECPs were also investigated.MethodsThis cross sectional study was conducted among 200 women of reproductive age (15-49 years) in Tamale, Ghana. Data on socio-demographic variables, awareness and usage of ECPs were assessed by means of a previously validated questionnaire. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were performed to identify factors associated with the use of ECPs.ResultsAwareness level of ECPs were found to be 69.0% (n = 138); 42.8% (n = 59) got the awareness from a health worker, 31.8% (n = 44) from the radio/TV and 25.4% (n = 35) from family members/friends. Eighty-five percent (n = 117) knew the correct time-frame for an effective use of ECP to prevent pregnancy. Forty percent (39.9%, n = 55) of the participants who had awareness have ever used ECPs. Factors that were found to be associated with the use of ECPs were; participants who said ECPs were affordable (AOR = 6.1, 95% CI = 2.51 – 10.40, p = 0.001), available (AOR 2.1, 95% CI = 0.61 – 6.01, p = 0.001), cultural (AOR = 3.5, 95% CI = 1.01 – 10.15, p = 0.011) and religious unacceptable (AOR = 4.0, 95% CI = 1.02 – 10.0, p = 0.005).ConclusionA relatively high level of awareness and usage of ECPs was found. Factors that were associated with the use of ECPs were availability and affordability. Cultural and religious unacceptability did not hinder the use of ECPs. Health authorities should continue to make ECPs available to women of reproductive age.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Amalba et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.