Perceptions of rural women about contraceptive usage in district Khushab, Punjab.

OBJECTIVE: To identify the perceptions of rural women about modern contraceptive methods and to ascertain the psycho-social and economic attitude of women about family planning methods.

METHODS: This cross-sectional study was conducted at the University of Sargodha, Sargodha, Pakistan, from December 2014 to March 2015, and comprised married women. The sample was selected using multistage sampling technique through Fitzgibbon table. They were interviewed regarding use of family planning methods. . SPSS 16 was used for data analysis.

RESULTS: Of the 500 women, 358(71.6%) were never-users and 142(28.4%) were past-users of family planning methods. Moreover, 52(14.5%) of never-users did not know about a single modern contraceptive method. Of the past-users, 43(30.3%) knew about 1-3 methods and 99(69.7%) about 4 or more methods. Furthermore, 153(30.6%) respondents graded condoms as good, 261(55.2%) agreed that family planning helped in improving one's standard of living to a great extent while 453(90.6%) indicated that family planning methods were not expensive. Besides, 366(71.2%) respondents believed that using contraceptive method caused infertility.

CONCLUSIONS: Dissatisfaction with methods, method failure, bad experiences with side effects, privacy concerns and different myths associated to the methods were strongly related to the non-usage of modern contraceptive methods.