Family planning use: prevalence, pattern and predictors among women in an urban slum in Enugu, Nigeria

Introduction: High fertility,high birth rates and low family planning prevalence rate is a common feature in developing countries with consequent rapid population growth. Family planning has saved the lives and protected the health of millions of women and children. This study aims to ascertain prevalence, pattern and predictors of family planning use among women living in an urban slum. Methodology: It was a Community based, descriptive cross sectional study using questionnaire. Chi square test was used to assess associations of socio-demographics characteristics with ever used and currently using family planning. Binary logistic regression was used to determine the predictors of family planning use. Result: Of the 281 women studied, 50.5% of respondents have used family planning method before and 35.6% still using. Commonly used methods include;withdrawal (30.2%),condom (26.7%) and abstinence (26.7%) while the least used were sterilization (1.1%) and BTL (1.4%).About 79.7% of non-users cited fear of side effects as the major reason and 9.3% discontinued due to side effects. There were statistically significant association of age, marital status, occupation and number of children with ever used family planning (all p 3 children 0.22 (95% CI: 0.06-0.81) likely to have ever used family planning than those with no children. Conclusion: Prevalence of family planning is poor. Fear of side effects, inconvenience and religion played a major role in the reduction of use of family planning. Identified predictors were age and number of children. There is need to increase access, reduce cost and improve promotion on services like counselling to enable informed choices which will ultimately increase family planning uptake. Keywords: Prevalence, pattern, predictors, family planning, urban slum