Unmet needs of family planning and practice of family planning in a selected urban to rural migrated population of Dhaka city

ABSTRACT

To ascertain the unmet needs of family planning and identify the practice of family planning among the urban to rural migrated slum dwellers. A cross-sectional descriptive study was done randomly among selected 600 slum dwellers residing in two selected slums of Dhaka city. Data collected by face to face interview using pretested semi structured questionnaire. Among the respondents 87.7% of were females, illiterate was 60% and most [79.9%] of the houses were katcha and [37.3%] of the families had 5-7 persons in each family. Most families [70%] had monthly income of less than 5000 [app.US$70] taka per month. Majority [89.3%] of the families lived in the villages before coming to Dhaka. About 31.34% were living in present slum for 5-10 years and 80% came for search for better work. It was also found that 33.7% of the couples were not using any contraceptive method. About 29% of these couples did not mention any specific cause for not using family planning method. Only 3.5% of the respondents said of any sort of difficulty in collecting contraceptives and the main difficulty was shyness. As regards knowledge of above consequence of not using contraceptive method 97.7% opined that it would cause unplanned pregnancy, which indicated their awareness towards family planning. The study found that the respondents were aware about the needs of family planning but a great number of them were not using any contraceptive method without any specific reason. Some behavior change communication activities can be run within these areas to bring them under the family planning methods which eventually enhance the population control activity of the country