Abstract:

Background: Despite the great efforts which are being played by several countries to meet the MDGs goals by 2015, the population growth rate has remained adequately high due to high in fertility rate. In Tanzania the fertility rate is adequately high more than 5.6. Therefore this study was done to access the knowledge, attitude and practice of contraceptive methods among the women admitted at the maternal and postnatal units of Meta hospital in Mbeya referral hospital.

Methods: This was a hospital based descriptive cross sectional study involving all women admitted at the antenatal and postnatal units of Meta hospital in Mbeya referral hospital during a study period. The data were collected by the use of piloted pretested structured questionnaire until an adequate sample was attained.

Results: A total of 150 women were enrolled in a study. 84.7% have knowledge and awareness of contraceptive methods and the most known methods were Norplant, Depo injections and oral contraceptive methods by 55.3%, 66.0% and 70.7% respectively and the less known methods are 28.3% IUCD, 19.3% condom, 7.3% calendar method and 1.3% LAM. The rate of use of contraceptive methods reported is 32.0%. About 18.0% reported to use injection method, 14.0% used oral contraceptive pills more frequently. Other methods were less used by respondents and rate of use is affected with increase in number of children at a p-value 0.022 which is statistically significant.

Conclusion: Despite the higher knowledge and awareness on contraceptive methods observed in our study; the rate of use of contraceptive methods remains very low.