Knowledge towards emergency contraceptives and associated factors among female high school and preparatory students in jinka town, south omo zone, SNNPR, Ethiopia.

Abstract

Background: Emergency contraceptives are types of family planning, which are mainly used after unsafe sex.Unwanted pregnancy is one of the most commonly observed reproductive health problems in Ethiopian demographic and health survey2011 reported that 28% pregnancies among women in reproductive age were unintended, This poses a range of major public health problems including an increased risk of complications associated with illegal abortions in the country and also associated with dropout of education amongst students which will lead to future unemployment and economic dependency in the end. Objectives: The purpose of this study was to assess Knowledge towards emergency contraceptives and associated factors among high school and preparatory students of Jinka town. Materials and methods: Institution based cross-sectional study was conducted;simple random sampling was used to select 468 female students. Study was conducted in Feb, 2015. Self administered pre-structured questionnaire was used for interview. Data entered to Epi info version 3.5.1 and exported to SPSS version16 for analysis. Results:Total number of participants was 468 with mean age of 17.27, with age gro up ranging from lowest 14 to highest age of 25 and standard deviation of 1.28.From the total respondents 78% responded they ever heard about emergency contraceptives. From those who ever heard of emergency contraceptives 41.5% mentioned pills and 11.8% mentioned intra uterine device as a means of emergency contraceptive. From the total respondents, 50.9% have good knowledge. After controlling confounders those who ever had sexual intercourse experience, marital status and everheard of emergency contraceptives are significantly associated with knowledge on emergency contraceptives. Conclusion and Recommendation:Thestudy showed there is low level of knowledge towards emergency contraceptives, which make need of awareness creation campa ign for emergency contraceptives mandatory.