Factors affecting access to family planning services among women aged 15-49 years in Northern rural Ghana

Salifu Sharif Alhassan

Nursing and Midwifery Training College, Zuarungu, Ghana

Adugbire Atinyagrika Bernard

Department of General Nursing, School of Nursing, University for Development Studies, Tamale, Ghana

Article
Article Info
Author Info
Figures & Data

Abstract

Background: Globally, access to family planning services and products has improved but the unmet needs for family planning remain high.in developing countries and access a challenge. An understanding of factors contributing to the unmet need for family planning especially among low-income urban women appears to be inadequate

Aim: To assess the views and experiences of women 15 to 49 years of the factors influencing their contraceptive needs.

Methods: We used a cross sectional survey design to collect and analyze the data. A simple random sampling technique was used to select 344 respondents. Structured questionnaire was used to obtain the necessary information. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 22.0, was used to analyze the descriptive and inferential statistics such as frequencies and percentages respectively

Results: We found that up to 54% of women continue to have unmet family planning needs. Education, distance and marital status were significant in women accessing and utilizing family planning services (ANOVA; P< 0.001 e.g., education and access to family planning services).  

Conclusion: Well-known social determinants such as socio-cultural factors, religion and distance remain a hindrance to women accessing family planning services. More understanding of the synergy of factors that influence the use of family planning services may be useful.  Respondents in this study live in areas with community health services planning (CHPS) centers, albeit distance remains a significant fact in the uptake of family planning services.

Key Words

Family Planning; Access; Contributory Factors

Under Process

Editorial Information

Article Type

Research Article

Publication history

Received date: Febuary 17, 2021
Accepted date: , 2020
Published date: , 2020

Copyright

©2021 Alhassan SS. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Corresponding author

Salifu Sharif Alhassan

Nursing and Midwifery Training College – Zuarungu. Bolgatanga East District - Ghana P.O. Box 660 Bolgatanga. assharif76@yahoo.com

No Figures