Abstract

Background: Worldwide, roughly 358,000 women and 3 million newborn babies die each year because of complications related to pregnancy and childbirth. Contraceptive use likely prevents more than 272,000 maternal deaths related to childbirth each year. In Ethiopia up to 78 percent of unwanted pregnancies were attributable to contraceptive non-use, incorrect use, or method failure. Long acting contraceptive methods are convenient for users, less discontinuation rate and effectively prevent pregnancy. Despite of its several advantages, long acting contraceptive methods utilization remains relatively low worldwide and in Ethiopia. The aim of this study was to assess the utilization of long acting contraceptive methods and its associated factors among married reproductive age women (15-49) in Arba Minch zuria district.

Methods: community based cross sectional study design was utilized. Simple random sampling technique was used to select 550 study participants from nine Demographic health survey research site kebeles from January 1st 2015 until January 30th 2015. The data was entered in to EPINFO version 3.5.1 and exported to SPSS version 20. Descriptive statistics was employed to describe each variables and multiple logistic regression to determine the association between determinant variables and outcome variable. P value less than 0.05 with 95% Confidence interval was considered as a significant variable.

Result: a total of 550 mothers were interviewed with 100% response rate. Currently 60(33%) mothers are using implants and 9(4.9%) intra uterine contraceptive devices. Highest wealth index (AOR=3.15, 95% CI (1.26, 7.94)), High level knowledge (AOR=7.59, 95% CI (3.22, 17.87)), positive attitude (AOR=3.82, 95%CI (1.97, 7.36)), No desire for more children (AOR=6.44, 95% CI (2.67, 15.51)) and husband support (AOR=2.54, 95% CI (1.41, 4.57)) showed significant association with utilization of long acting contraceptive methods.

Conclusion: Utilization of long acting contraceptive methods was low as compared to other studies. Having high level knowledge, positive attitude, No desire for more children and husband’s support for family planning use showed significant association with utilization of long acting methods. The importance of use of these methods over the other has to be advocated through media to increase awareness and utilization. A strategy to involve husbands’ in utilization of long acting contraceptives has to be designed in the health education program