Abstract:
Background: The unmet need for family planning is defined as the proportion of married
women of reproductive age who are not using any method but would like to postpone the next
pregnancy, or who do not want any more children. The Ministry of Health aimed to increase
the contraceptive prevalence rate to 55%. So, in order to achieve this national goal we need to
address the factors related to unmet need of contraceptive. As far as my knowledge is
concerned there is no published research done in Harar city which asses’ unmet need of
contraceptive.
Objective: To assess the prevalence and factors associated to unmet need for contraceptive
and associated factors among married women in Harar City, Eastern Ethiopia, from January to
February 2018.
Method and materials: Community based cross-sectional study design was conducted on 630
reproductive age married women living in Harar city. Pretet was done 5% of study population.
A multi-stage sampling technique was used to select 630 participants in this study. The data
entered into Epi-data software and exported to SPSS for further data cleaning and analysis.
Bivariate logistic regression analysis was used to identify factors associated with unmet need.
Level of statistical significance was confirmed at p < 0.05.
Result: Total unmet need for contraceptive was 22% (spacing 15.6%, limiting 6.4%). Fear of
side effect was the major reason for not using contraceptive. Husbands support of using
contraceptive (AOR=4.143, 95% CI: 1.310-13.10), Age group of 35-49 (AOR=7.627, 95% CI:
2.418-24.06), ever use of contraceptive (AOR=0.026, 95% CI: 0.006-0.115) and breast
feeding (AOR=2.228 95% CI: 1.219-4.073) were significantly associated with unmet need of
contraceptive.
Conclusion and Recommendation: Though there is availability of contraceptive methods,
and high proportion of respondents had knowledge about it, there is still high proportion.
Empowering women and participating husbands in strategy of reducing unmet need are
recommended. HEW should keep discussing and encouraging women to use contraceptive.
