ASSESSMENT OF MODERN CONTRACEPTIVE UTILIZATION IN HEALTH FACILITIES REPORTING ON DISTRICT HEALTH INFORMATION SYSTEM PLATFORM IN RIVERS STATE

Abstract

The study assessed the extent of utilization of modern methods of contraception in health facilities reporting on the electronic District Health Information System version 2.0 (DHIS2) in Rivers State, Nigeria.  Awareness of modern methods of contraception in the State was as high as 99.6% but this did not translate to a high contraceptive prevalence rate (CPR); hence the motivation to measure the CPR status/performance in the State over the period 2016 to 2020 against the national FP2020 project target of 27% by 2020.  Analytic, descriptive retrospective study design was adopted. A sample of 254 health facilities which constituted about 69.2% of all the public and private health facilities on the State DHIS2 platform were selected using purposive sampling technique.  The extent of modern contraceptive utilization by women aged 15-49 years for the different categories of independent variables were measured using modern contraceptive prevalence rate (mCPR). The Chi square statistics was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The State achieved a mCPR of 4.13% within 2016 to 2020. The year 2020 witnessed the highest mCPR of 7.06%. The Urban areas, Okrika LGA, and the Tertiary health facilities recorded the highest mCPRs of 5.77%, 10.62% and 8.84% respectively in the period. Statistically significant differences (p < 0.05) were noted in contraceptive utilization in the different LGAs, the Urban, Suburban and Rural areas, and among the different health facility types in the period. The Tertiary health facilities contributed over 200% to the State mCPR of 4.13% reported within the period. Conclusively, the State achieved over 190% increment in mCPR within 5years, and over 15% of the national FP2020 target of 27% by 2020 in the same period. Therefore, to further improve on the State mCPR and to meet target levels, the cause(s) of the low contraceptive utilization in 13 LGAs, the Rural areas, and the Secondary and primary health facilities must be investigated and resolved.