Fear of side effect as a barrier to long term contraceptive use in Southwest, Nigeria

Olusegun Awolaran, Department of Preventive Medicine, Nigeria

One of the issues that is consistently raised in studies in Sub-Saharan Africa is the non-use of contraceptive methods due to fear of side effects or detrimental health effects. This descriptive cross sectional study was carried out in the Ogun state, South west, Nigeria and was targeted at women of reproductive age More than half of the women (54.1%) had heard of side effects of modern contraceptive but only about 21% had experienced any form of side effect in their life. Another 45% of the respondent claimed to have seen someone with a side effect of child spacing. About 58% of these respondents said they are scared by the information of the side effect that they have heard. There is no statistically significant association between the level of education of the respondent their use of a modern contraceptive in the past nor with their feeling about anyone using contraceptives (p>0.005).