Introduction
Worldwide, an estimated 16 million adolescents fall pregnant annually among these; at least three (3) million have unsafe abortions performed. Similarly, in sub-Sharan Africa more than 50% of the pregnancies in adolescents are unintended and of those, more than half of them end in unsafe abortions (Susheela Singh and Jacqueline E. Darroch & Darroch, 2012). 24% of adolescent females get pregnant annually in Uganda, and most of these are unwanted and unintended pregnancies (Atuyambe et al., 2015). These statistics indicate a problem of unmet need for contraception in Uganda, more so among adolescents, and this calls for more impact studies around adolescent unmet needs for contraception if the problem is to be meaningfully mitigated.
Methods
An explorative quantitative secondary data analysis study was conducted to determine the unmet need for contraception and its determinants among adolescent girls in Uganda, based on 2011 Ugandan Demographic and Health Survey (UDHS) data.
Results
Focusing exclusively on female adolescent’s aged 15- 19 years (n= 541), STATA software logistic regression was done to test a model on factors that are significantly associated with unmet needs in the target population of the study. A third (30%) of the study population reported having an unmet need for contraception; the study also revealed that the educational status of an adolescent girl was statistically significant (p=0.002) and related to unmet needs. Married adolescent girls were four times more likely to have unmet needs than those who were never in a union (OR=4.63; 95% CI: 2.06-10.39; p<0.001). Likewise, those adolescent girls who reported living with a partner were twice as likely to have a higher unmet need compared to those having no partners (OR=2.83; 95% CI: 1.30-6.16; p=0.009).
Conclusion
Any efforts to address the unmet need for contraception among adolescents in Uganda would need specific attention on factors influencing the uptake of family planning services, education, marital status and place of residence being key determinant factors.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:uct/oai:localhost:11427/31672 |
| Date | 23 April 2020 |
| Creators | Magezi, Alex |
| Contributors | Alaba, Olufunke |
| Publisher | Faculty of Health Sciences, Department of Public Health and Family Medicine |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Master Thesis, Masters, MPH |
| Format | application/pdf |
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