Women of Reproductive Age in Jazan City, Saudi Arabia: A Cross-Sectional Survey on Contraceptive Use and Related Factors

Mona Elmahdy^*
*Correspondence: Mona Elmahdy, Department of Family and Community Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Jazan University, Jazan 45142, Saudi Arabia, Email:

Keywords

Contraceptive methods • Pregnancies • Reproduction

Introduction

Couples can use family planning to have the amount of children they want and to space out pregnancies as they see fit. By interfering with the natural processes of ovulation, fertilisation, and implantation, contraception (also known as birth control) prevents undesired pregnancies. There are many various types of birth control available, each with its own unique action and efficacy in preventing conception. According to the World Health Organization, providing women with access to their preferred methods of contraception is crucial to promoting their health, the health of their children, and the economic status of their society. The importance of women's reproductive rights, particularly the freedom to choose when, how many, and how closely to space out their children, is well established. The postpartum period is crucial for starting contraception since ovulation can happen as soon as 25 days after giving birth. It is strongly advised to take contraception for an additional year following the birth of the child, since waiting until menstruation has returned might put women at danger of an unintended pregnancy.

Based on the Saudi Household Survey, the profile of contraceptive usage in Saudi Arabia showed that women of reproductive age used contraceptives. Based on the Saudi Household Survey, the profile of contraceptive usage in Saudi Arabia showed that the majority of women of reproductive age used contraceptives. For Saudi women, oral contraceptives were the most used technique. The frequency of unintended pregnancies was recently studied in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province and was found to be Age, number of children born, education level, and family size were the key predictors of usage among Saudi women, whereas cultural obstacles and the notion that contraceptives are harmful to women's health were the top deterrents. Cultural values and traditions are among the elements that influence the economies of Middle. How widely contraception is used for the creation of population policies and health care planning, family planning knowledge and usage are essential components. It is unclear how extensive family planning is in southwest Saudi Arabia. In order to establish effective, evidence-based policies to encourage the use of contraceptives in Jazan, Saudi Arabia, we need baseline data. With the help of this effort, we intend to sketch the profile of family planning in Jazan. There haven't been many researches on contraceptives done in the Jazan area. Therefore, the current study's objectives were to assess the knowledge, attitudes, and use of contraception among women in Jazan of reproductive age and to investigate any potential contributing variables. For Saudi women, oral contraceptives were the most used technique.

Literature Review

We added 80 more individuals to the final sample size. The five PHCCs in Jazan city that were chosen at random each received the same amount of the sample. Finally, women were chosen by convenience sampling from each. Face-to-face interviews were used by the study team to gather data. Data gathering involved the use of a standard questionnaire. After consulting the relevant literature, the study team created the questionnaire. The final questionnaire comprised four sections: marital status, number of pregnancies, number of children, and personal characteristics including age and education level. The second component of the survey asked questions concerning women's understanding of contraception, the most popular form of birth control among them.

The second portion of the survey asked questions concerning women's understanding of contraception, the most popular technique used by participants, their sources of information, and their awareness of potential drawbacks. The third segment looked into how women felt about using contraceptives, and the fourth component spoke about using them. Multiplechoice and dictum questions were used in the knowledge and practises portions (yes and no responses). Using a 5-point Likert scale, attitudes about the usage of contraceptive techniques were assessed. The questionnaire's phrasing was tested in a pilot study with 25 women in an effort to minimise bias or inter-observer variance. The content validity approach was used to assess the questionnaire's validity, and the Cronbach's alpha coefficient.

Discussion

Through a cross-sectional epidemiologic investigation, this research attempted to evaluate the knowledge about, attitudes toward, and behaviours of contraceptive usage among women in Jazan, Saudi Arabia. The study's findings seem to indicate that participants had a very high level of awareness of contemporary family planning techniques, which is consistent with the majority of the Saudi family planning literature unfortunately, despite having a high degree of understanding about contraception, only 64.4% of women actually use them. Although there has been a significant socioeconomic shift in Saudi women's work and education, which has led to some fertility drop, the prevailing culture still promotes high levels of reproduction. Our findings indicate that of women in Jazan used contraception at some stage. Numerous investigations carried out in Saudi Arabia, such as Al-Husain et al2018.’s study in Jeddahand Albezrah's 2015 study in Taif (67.7%) are consistent with this estimate. Lower usage rates than these were seen in other Saudi Arabian research, including Kharif et al. 2017 and Al Sheeha, 2010 (44.8%) Additionally, our estimate is significantly lower than that of Alenezi and Haridi, 2021, who said that 85% of women in northern Saudi Arabia had ever taken contraception .Our estimate of contraceptive use is greater than that of other Middle Eastern nations.

The results of the current investigation showed that employed women and housewives used contraceptives at the greatest rates. This trend resembles that discovered in a research conducted in the KSA's Aljouf area . The study's participants' rates of contraceptive usage among female students were the lowest. The primary cause was that those students, who were primarily in young couples, nevertheless desired to have additional children. It is well knowledge that South Saudi Arabia has a young median age for first marriages. According to our findings, friends and family accounted for 58% of the participants' information sources. This result is consistent with findings from earlier research carried out in the , which similarly indicated that close family and friends were the primary source [1-5].

Conclusion

The findings showed that child spacing was the primary justification for using contraceptives. This is in line with other research in The majority of people in the Middle East are Muslims, and they utilise contraception to space out their children rather than to reduce the number of births. The prevailing society promotes pregnancy and birth, and young couples are always under pressure to have their first child. According to the findings of the logistic regression model, women's usage of contraception increased as their ages did. Additionally, having several pregnancies or children was linked to increasing usage of contraceptive techniques. The findings of Khari et al., who came to the conclusion that the number of children is a favourable predictor of contraceptive usage, and the findings of this study are in agreement.

Last but not least, the most recent Saudi Household Health Survey done in found that the average number of children a woman has over her lifetime in Jazan is live births. This metric might be linked to women in the Jazan area using contraceptives. Two thirds of the women utilised contraception, according to our findings. Education and contraception have been shown to hasten the reduction in reproduction, according to Liu and Raftery. More study is required to determine the relationship between contraceptive usage and declining fertility in Saudi Arabia, particularly in the Jazan area, where fertility was below replacement. There are several restrictions on this study. First, because the study is cross-sectional in nature, it is appropriate to refer to the links between variables as general associations.

Acknowledgement

None.

Conflict of Interest

There are no conflicts of interest by author.

References

1. Soliman, Ghada A. "Intermittent fasting and time-restricted eating role in dietary interventions and precision nutrition." Frontiers in Public Health (2022): 4073.

Google Scholar, Crossref, Indexed at

2. Wang, Dong D., and Frank B. Hu. "Precision nutrition for prevention and management of type 2 diabetes." The lancet Diabetes & endocrinology 6 (2018): 416-426.

Google Scholar, Crossref, Indexed at

3. Nogal, Bartek, Jeffrey B. Blumberg, Gil Blander, and Milena Jorge. "Gut microbiota–informed precision nutrition in the generally healthy individual: are we there yet." Curr Dev Nutr 5 (2021): nzab107.

Google Scholar, Crossref, Indexed at

4. Mortazavi, Bobak J., and Ricardo Gutierrez-Osuna. "A review of digital innovations for diet monitoring and precision nutrition." J diabetes Sci Technol 17 (2023): 217-223.

Google Scholar, Crossref, Indexed at

5. Noerman, Stefania, and Rikard Landberg. "Blood metabolite profiles linking dietary patterns with health—Toward precision nutrition." J Intern Med (2022).

Google Scholar, Crossref, Indexed at