Factors Militating Against Family Planning Amongst Women In Rural Communities

1.6 Significance of Study

High fertility rate and inadequate spacing between births, can lead to high maternal and infant mortality. An estimated 600 000 maternal deaths occur worldwide each year; the vast majority of these take place in developing countries. WHO estimates that 13% of these deaths are due to unsafe abortion. Worldwide, where approximately 50 million women resort to induced abortion, frequently results in high maternal morbidity and mortality. Thus, family planning and spacing among births are one of the methods to avoid these deaths. Promotion of family planning and contraceptive use is highly adopted by the international community as one of the strategy to reduce the maternal mortality and to reach the Millennium Development Goals. Africa characterized by high rate of lack to contraceptive access reaching 57% and this lack lead to unwanted pregnancies, increased demand to abortion and death related to unsafe abortion.

In Nigeria, there is unaccepted high maternal mortality. Moreover, legally, politically and culturally access to abortion create internal dispute, therefore effective contraceptive programming should be the current and future approach to reduce the risk and unwanted pregnancies. Few published data exist concerning use of family planning services in Nigeria especially northern part where we have recently observed high maternal morbidity and mortality in this setting. This study will educate the public as well as provide literature on the subject matter.

1.6 Limitations

1. Cultural influences and beliefs may hinder the respondents from giving clear responses.

Therefore, research assistants were recruited from these communities in order to respect their culture and to ease acceptance by the community members.

2. Perception by respondents that the interviewers want to impose the idea of contraception use on them may arise. Hence, the research assistants were adequately trained on conducting interviews thereby minimally reducing the chances of perception of contraception imposition among respondents.