Knowledge and Practice of Emergence Contraceptives among Female Students of Ejere High School and Preparatory School, Ejere Woreda, West Shoa Zone, Oromia Region, Central Ethiopia

Abstract

Back ground: Emergency contraceptive is a type of modern contraception that is indicated after un-protected sexual practice or due to contraceptive failure. Although Emergency contraceptive prevent unwanted pregnancy and its consequences like unsafe abortion and unintended child birth, there is no information about the knowledge and practice of Emergence contraceptive among young females in the study area.

Objective: The aim of this study is to assess the knowledge and practice of Emergence contraceptive among female students of Ejere high school and preparatory school.

Method: A facility based cross sectional study design was conducted among 270 Ejere high school and preparatory school female students from April 1-15 of 2015. A simple random sampling technique was used to select the study subjects until the required sample size was collected. Then the collected data was analyzed and presented in tables, figures and narratives.

Results: From the total respondents, about 116 (43%) of the respondents were replied as they have heard about emergence contraceptives and only 44 (38%) and 14 (22%) of the respondents were knowledgeable and ever practiced emergency contraceptive respectively. Among those sexually active respondents (23.7%), some of the reasons why they were not using ECs are lack of knowledge about ECs, no desire to use the methods and due to religious reasons.

Conclusion: The study indicated that the knowledge and utilization level of emergency contraceptives among the respondents were low. Therefore, Ejere woreda health office in collaboration with Ejere educational office should work on awareness creation about emergency contraceptives, when it was used, its advantage to prevent unwanted pregnancy and its damaging consequences after unprotected sex among the young female students.

Keywords: Emergency contraceptives, knowledge, Practice, Ejere high and preparatory school