Abstract

Background: Being first in the world to launch nationwide family planning program, population stabilization is still a major concern for India and now with rapid expansion of urban slums with poor service delivery and limited research, it could transform into a formidable public health challenge.

Objectives: (1) To find out unmet need for family planning in urban slum community. (2) To study birth spacing practices in urban slums.

Materials and Methods: The crosssectional study was conducted during October-November 2015 in urban slum pockets of Ahmedabad city. A total of 195 women and child pair were interviewed using a pretested questionnaire. Data collected was entered in Microsoft Office 2007, and Epi info 7 was utilized for applying statistical tests. P < 0.05 was considered to be significant.

Results: Unmet need for family planning was found out to be 46.2% with that for spacing is 11.6% and for limiting is 34.6%. The contraceptive prevalence rate of any method was found to be 49.4%. Contraceptive usage was high among literate subjects (63.5%) as compared to among illiterate subjects (32%) (Chi-square value 17 at P < 0.01). Median birth spacing interval was found to be 27 months with 44% of literate couples practicing adequate birth spacing of >36 months while only 16.9% of illiterate couples follow the same (Chi-square value 16.16 at P < 0.01).

Conclusion: The study showed a high unmet need for contraception despite high knowledge of places of procurement in the study area indicative of a huge gap between service delivery and utilization in urban slums. Educated couples were found to be more vigilant in practicing family planning and adequate birth spacing.

Key words: Birth Spacing; Contraception; Family Planning; Unmet Need