Unmet Need for Contraception: An Assessment for Enriching Public Health Interventions

Unmet need is a powerful concept for designing family planning programmes and has important implications for future population growth. It provides a target of women most likely and willing to use contraceptive methods. The present study was conducted to find out the extent of unmet need for contraception among women of reproductive age group (15 – 49 years) in a tertiary care hospital of Nagpur and to study the socio-demographic factors associated with unmet need. A cross sectional study was conducted for 2 months using a pre-designed and pre-tested questionnaire for data collection. Two hundred and fifty women were included in the study using convenience sampling. The unmet need for family planning was found to be 17.6%, out of which 61.4% was for spacing and the remaining 38.6% was for limiting. Significant association was found between literacy status, type of family and occupation whereas no significance was found between unmet need and age of the woman, total number of children and male children. Lack of awareness and misconception about contraceptive methods is responsible for the high prevalence of unmet need. Therefore, continuous awareness of contraceptive methods with regard to different methods, their usage, availability and accessibility to the beneficiaries should be made.