Contraception Use among Parous Egyptian Women Attending an Antenatal Clinic

Objectives: To determine the use of different methods of contraception by Egyptian women, and also to identify the factors affecting their choice of family planning methods. Study Design: Cross sectional study. Methods: One thousand consecutive parous women attending the antenatal clinic at Fayoum University Teaching Hospital, Egypt were involved in this study. Of these, 614 women had used contraception. Ultimately, 612 of these had their questionnaire analyzed for the study purpose. They were invited to participate in the study. Those who agreed to participate gave verbal informed consent. A face-to-face structured interview was conducted with the selected women by the authors. The response rate was 99.7% for completing the questionnaire. The questionnaire schedule elicited information in respect of the biosocial characteristics of the women’s age, parity; education level; work status; the type and methods of family planning they ever used; reasons for choice of contraception; desired number of children; sources of information on contraception and information obtained about informed choice. Statistical analysis was carried out using Statistical Pack-age for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 16 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, USA). The data were described using percentages. Chi-square (c2) was used to find out the presence of significant differences between the studied groups. The p 0.05 were considered as statistically significant. Results: The prevalence of contraception was 61%, more than one quarter of the participants (27%) used IUD as a method of contraception. The implants use was highest among women who received high education. Husbands play a minimal role in the choice of contraception and females were responsible for decision making regarding the use of contraception among different educational levels. There was significant difference between modern contraceptive users regarding the desired number of children: The percent of women desired 5+ children was lower among implant than pill and IUD users. Conclusion: IUD and injectables were the most widely used methods of contraception. There is a growing use of implants particularly among women of high education. There is a decline in exposure to family planning messages. Also, information given to users is very lacking. Providing better counseling would assist the user in coping with side effects and decreases unnecessary discontinuation of contraception methods.