Is Contraception Usage Affected During Corona Virus Disease 2019 Pandemic Among Women in Saudi Arabia?

ABSTRACT

Background: Contraception has many benefits beside improvimg women health such as increasing child survival and improving perinatal outcomes due to interpregnancy interval regulation. Objectives: to assess the knowledge and attitude of Saudi women regarding the use of contraceptives, to measure the prevalence of contraception use, and to highlight factors affecting the use of contraception among women in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia during covid 19 pandemic.Methods: This is a comparative cross-sectional descriptive study involving 432 saudi arabian women during the period from July 2021 to July 2022. Data was collected through an online questionnaire formulated to survey saudi women due to covid 19 pandemics measures.Results: Overall knowledge was good among 48% of participants. Regarding attitude towards contraception use. About 77.8% agreed to use contraception while only 3% disagreed. 90.7% had an experience with contraceptive methods either currently or previously. Coitus interruption was the commonest method used by about 20%, followed by COC (18%), then condom (12.5%). Predictors for higher use were husband higher education, gravidity of two to four and previous one to two cesarean section (AOR=10.048,283,20.047 respectively).Conclusion: Participants had good contraceptive knowledge and positive attitude towards contraception use. Proportion of contraceptive methods use was high among participants. We recommend more health education campaigns about the importance of contraception especially during the COVID 19 pandemic and among women who had previous cesarean section. We also recommend more research involving a representative sample from all regions of the kingdom.