Measuring unmet need for family planning among wives husbands &amp; couples
Creators: name: Mubarik, Kerimudin
Publisher: name: National Academic Digital Repository of Ethiopia
Year: 2005

description: Since husbands &amp; wives differ in fertility desire and intention to use contraception which implies spouses individually &amp; as couple have different level of need regarding contraception. To estimates unmet need level for contraception of couples data from both spouses are required; so community based cross sectional study was conducted between Jan 3-Jan 17, 2005 in six kebeles of Harar city, eastern Ethiopia. After 19 Kebeles of the city was stratified in to three strata based on socio-economic factors, two Kebeles from each of the three strata was selected by simple random sampling. 1/6th of sample size was selected from each of the 6 kebeles by systematic sampling. The study units were married couples with wives age ranges 15-49 year. Four hundred sixty couples were interviewed using pre tested questionnaires. Data were collected from both spouses regarding fertility desire &amp; its timing; wanted-ness and timing of pregnant/lactating women at the time were used to determine level of un-met need among husbands, wives &amp; couples and also to assess factors associated with un-met need. A minimum estimate of unmet need for contraception of couples not practicing contraceptives is produced when both partners have unmet need &amp; a maximum estimate of unmet need for contraception of couples not practicing contraceptives occurs if either spouse having unmet need defines unmet need. Husbands are found to have more children and sooner than wives and wives have more desire to limit and intend to use contraceptives than husbands. Unmet need estimate level for wives', husbands' and coples' (minimum) were found to be 15.3%, 16.5% and 4.7% respectively. All figures are (below expectation) very low in comparison to other study results. For example when compared with 36% unmet level for married women by the DHS Ethiopia survey with the one obtained from this study it is very low (15.3%). This is probably due to the constellation of the following factors. The presence of two hospitals, FGAE clinic &amp; other facility in the city of harar, 86% of all couples in the study have alive vi children &amp; out of them 58% have at least two children; more than 78% of couples reported usage of a method in the past, only 19% of wives and 10% of husbands are illiterates, mean time to reach the service point was is only 30 minutes, more than 82% of couples approve contraceptive use, 60% of couples have discussed contraceptive issue in the last six months, more than 90% of couples heard and knew about contraceptives, 67% of couples have both T.V and radio; resulting in higher contraceptive prevalence which is 69% for wives and 66% for husbands. Amongst the factors considered to be associated with unmet need like age, education, number of alive children, knowledge &amp; attitude towards contraceptives and so on; only perceived approval of contraceptives use by spouses and discussion about contraceptives between spouses are found to be associated significantly (p=.00) (table8 ,9). This warrants promotion and promotion activity to enhance communication between spouses. Incorporating reproductive health need of male in the over all reproductive health planning and service delivery and to make them male friendly is very important.(3) Endeavour to enhance prevalence of permanent contraceptive methods including vasectomy, which is very low at the moment, for limiters. Studies on family planning should include both women and men to enhance successful family planning service delivery that targets couples.