Utilization of Long Acting and Permanent Contraceptive Methods and Associated Factors among Married Childbearing Age Women in Bombe District, Southern Ethiopia

Introduction: Family Planning utilization decreases maternal mortality and morbidity as well as contributes to improvement in infant welfare and community health at large. Long acting and permanent contraceptive methods are the most effective modern contraceptive methods with less than 1% failure rate and cost-effective choices because of the many years of protection. However, they contribute only about 12% of modern contraceptive use in Ethiopia. This study was designed to assess extent of utilization and associated factors of long acting and permanent contraceptive methods among married reproductive age women in Southern Ethiopia. Methods: Community based cross-sectional study was conducted among married reproductive age women. Multistage sampling was employed to select 622 study participants. Pretested questionnaire was used to interview the participants. The crude and adjusted odds ratios together with their corresponding 95% levels of confidence were computed and interpreted accordingly. Bivariate and multivariate analyses were applied to test predictors by using logistic regression model. The final model fitness was checked by Hosmer and Lemshow’s goodness-of-fit statistics. A P-value less than or equal to 0.05 in multivariate analysis was considered to declare a result as statistically significant. Results: This study had 96.5% response rate. More than half (62%) of married woman in the study district were poorly knowledgeable about long acting and permanent contraceptive methods. Almost all (97.2%) of the participants had at least one pregnancy in their life time. The overall prevalence of long acting and permanent contraceptive methods utilization was 16.3%. Out of this, 82.7% of the women were using implants. Based on the analysis, ages, educational level, knowledge, mass media exposure, having methods choice discussion between partners or health extension workers were found to be important predictors LAPMs utilization. Conclusion: The overall utilization of long acting and permanent contraceptive methods was low. Efforts to improve LAMPs utilization in the region must strengthen initiatives that promote girls education, train professionals and deploy at grass root level, behavioural change communication, awareness creation among others. It would be good to further study facility related barriers and cultural influences on the use of LAMPs.