Female Head-Porter Access to Family Planning Services in Ejura Municipality, Ghana

Family planning is unique among health interventions in the breadth of its benefits—family planning decreases maternal and child mortality, empowers women, reduces poverty and it lessens stress on the natural and political environment’. In many resource-poor settings, the growing unmet need for contraception is astounding. Couples who wish to have fewer children are unable to determine the size of their families as family planning funding continues to become scarce and existing programmes and services fail to meet the concerns and desires of their users. It is important to emphasize not telling women how many children they should have, but underscore that they have a right and the freedom to choose how to control their own fertility. Similarly the introduction of family planning programmes in the Ejura municipality seems not to have achieved the desired result. According to the Ejura Municipal Health Directorate Annual Report for 2010 family planning acceptance rate is percent. The extent of meeting the needs of vulnerable groups such as female head porters have not been determined through any investigation. The research therefore assessed the Female head porter’s access to contraceptives in the Ejura Municipality, Ashanti Region, specifically on, Source of contraception information, education and service, attitudes towards contraceptives, Preferred contraceptive methods and reasons for use and common barriers and concerns and fashion out recommendations that will serve as possible basis for future strategies. In a cross sectional study to assess the accessibility of contraceptives to female head porters between the ages of twelve and thirty five in the Ejura Municipality, two hundred and seventy two female head porters were selected from Ejura market using systematic and random sampling who were interviewed using structured questionnaire. The research revealed that knowledge level of respondents about contraceptives is high (92% of respondents). In addition, majority (57.7%) of respondents receive information on contraceptive from health care providers. Most respondents (88%) accept the attitude of health care providers to be friendly, 80% of them accept there is always privacy when service is provided. 71% accepted that they were counseled before product was supplied. Furthermore, most of them, between 74%-94% accept their choice of contraceptive to be safe, cheap, always available, convenient, reliable, and simple, without side effect, does not interfere with sexual intercourse and within their reach. Surprisingly, usage of contraceptive was very low, 60% of respondents indicated they never use contraceptive and only 40% claimed to have ever used contraceptives. Injectable seem to be the most (48%) preferred contraceptive. Furthermore, between 74%-94% accept their choice of contraceptive to be safe, cheap, always available, convenient, reliable, and simple, without side effect, does not interfere with sexual intercourse and within their reach. Undesirable side effect of contraceptive, religion and cultural acceptance are the main barrier to the use of contraceptive. Religion and cultural acceptance was a controversy. Some of the respondents (63%) agreed their religion and culture accept their use whilst others (35%) disagreed.

Source: KNUST