Contraceptive practices adopted by women attending an urban health centre in Punjab, India

Introduction: An estimated 215 million women in theworld who want to avoid pregnancy are not using aneffective method of contraception, despite increases inuse in recent years. Studies to determine the sociodemographicfactors responsible for adoptingcontraceptive methods by the eligible couples would helpus in planning for effective management of family planningservices as we would focus our resources towards placeswhich are neglected and those which will give us the bestresults.Objectives: 1. To determine the prevalence of differenttypes of contraceptive usage among eligible couples(aged 15-45 years). 2. To study different variablesaffecting the prevalence of contraceptive use amongeligible couples.Materials and Methods: Cross-Sectional descriptive study byinterview method of 260 Eligible couples from January toDecember 2011 was done.Results: Contraceptive prevalence was found to be 53.84%.Among the permanent sterilization methods, the mostcommonly used method was Tubectomy (4.23%) while only0.7 % of the eligible couples opted for Vasectomy. Among thespacing methods Condoms, Oral Contraceptive Pills andIntra-Uterine Devices were used by 41.6%, 28.4% and 8.0%of the eligible couples respectively. The percentage of familyplanning methods used by Hindus and Sikhs were almostequal i.e. 54.96% and 56.52% respectively. A huge contrastwas seen in the context of socio-economic status.Conclusion: Increased usage of contraceptives requirescontinuous motivation and the factors affecting the prevalencerates of usage should be found in the local community.