Abstract:

Background: Family planning is a voluntary decision between couple or an individual on the number of children they would like to have and when they would like to have them and how they should be spaced.

Problem Statements: The studies done is Mbeya City found that only 20% of the reproductive women have knowledge of contraceptive, this shows that only small number of women were aware of contraceptives. Due to the fact that there were no study done in Nyamagana District, there was a need of doing a study.

Research Objective: The objective of the research was to assess the contraceptive prevalence and patterns of use of contraceptive methods among women of reproductive age (15-49 years) in Nyamagana district – Mwanza City.

Research Methods: This was a descriptive cross-sectional, home based study conducted among women of reproductive age in Nyamagana district. Data were collected through well-structured questionnaire translated in Swahili. The data analysed by means of computer program (SPSS-20).

Research Results: The result of the study found that 85.40% of the interviewed women had knowledge of contraceptives, and among those women only 68% were practicing contraception. The most used contraceptive methods were injectable, followed by pills, condoms, calendar, implants and other (i.e. IUCD or sterilization).

Most women got information about contraceptives mostly from their friend (33.7%) followed nurses (39.4%) and media (Radio, TV, Newspapers, or Seminars) by 26.9%.

The study revealed that majority of women who practiced contraception where those who were married (68.10%), followed by divorced women (12.60%), cohabited women (8.40%), unmarried women (6.70%) and finally by unmarried women by 4.20%). Also the result shown that among the interviewed women those who were attained primary education practiced contraception in large by 68.10% followed by those attained secondary or University education by 20.10% and less by those who didn’t attained school by 11.80%.

Conclusion: In the study it was revealed that majority (84.4%) of the women had knowledge / awareness, this is lower than that found from a study done in Dar es Salaam (96.1%) and Cost region (89.1%), but it is more than in Mbeya (20%) and Arusha (62.5%), but few of them practiced contraception (68%) as compared to previous studies done in different region of our country. However during the study it was found that most of women complained about adverse effect of some methods of contraception, example about 69% and 52% of the interviewed women complained on bleeding and cancer respectively as the adverse effects. And those adverse effects threaten them from using contraception.