Abstract

Refugees especially the female adolescents and youths have highly vulnerable due to high risk of sexual violence, exploitation and abuse, and early or forced marriage. Adolescent pregnancies are reported to be higher among refugees or displaced persons than the non-displaced persons at 30 and 19% respectively. They also have low contraceptive prevalence rate and have accessibility and availability challenges in procuring family planning services. To mitigate these challenges, routine family planning outreaches were conducted to two refugee camps in south-south region of Nigeria over a period of 12months.

A total of 308 men and women received modern contraceptives during the outreaches. This is about 4% of the total population of men and women within the reproductive age group. Also, only 179 women and girls within the reproductive age group received modern contraceptives during the outreaches, which also account for 4% of all women within reproductive age group residing in the camps. About 46% received condoms only, 54% received implants and condoms, 2% received both injectables and condoms and another 2% received oral pills and condoms.

The low uptake of contraceptives in this study is similar to the results in other studies in similar settings. Factors responsible could include inadequate knowledge on contraceptives, fear of side effects, partner prohibitions, poor access to modern contraceptives.

The pattern of contraceptive types distributed could reflect availability of contraceptives and fulfilling the eligibility criteria by the clients.

Keywords: Contraceptive; Family Planning

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Citation

Citation: Abayomi Joseph Afe., et al. “Uptake of Family Planning Services Among Refugees in South-South Nigeria: The Impact of Medical Outreaches”. Acta Scientific Women's Health 3.2 (2021): 30-34.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2021 Abayomi Joseph Afe., et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.