Indian Journal of Public Health Research & Development

In spite of various efforts on the government's part, the percentage of eligible couples using contraception is low, leading to population explosion.

1. To find the prevalence rates of different types of contraceptive methods adopted by eligible couples, in a rural population. 2. To assess how personal and socio-cultural factors influence the choice of a contraceptive method.

It was a cross sectional study done on randomly selected 300 eligible couples of a rural population served by PHC Mugalivakkam, Porur, Chennai. Pretested questionnaire was used to collect the data by interview method.

The age of the respondents at the time of study ranged between 18 to 46 years. Among the 300 study population, 179 were currently using either a permanent or temporary method of contraception, with the prevalence of contraceptive use being 59.7% (95% CI 54.1 to 65.3).Among the women who had 2 children, 37.2% were users of contraceptives as compared to 15% who had more than 2 children (X29263.3, p< 0.001 Statistically significant). Health factors influencing the discontinuation of contraceptive usage were abdominal pain in 26.3%, leucorrhoea 15.8%, menorrhagia 5.3% and irregular menstruation in 5.3% of subjects.

The overall prevalence of contraceptive use was found to be 59.7%.Though the prevalence of contraceptive use among the study population was high as compared to National average, there are still important factors of concern like early age at marriage, increased parity, low Interspouse communication and health factors for non usage of contraceptives. This suggests that there is still scope for improving the contraceptive usage amongst women with regard to their education which, in turn, would lead to women empowerment. The effect of this causality would be the improvement of Interspouse communication. Interspouse communication enables eligible couples to take responsible reproductive decisions, and also garner acceptance and compliance of contraceptive use.