Missed opportunity for family planning in urban hospital settings

- Dr Adu-Bonsaffoh

Dakar, Dec. 8, GNA - Dr Kwame Adu-Bonsaffoh, an Obstetric and Gyaenacologist, has said that there is a missed opportunity for family planning among women with very severe obstetric complications in urban hospital settings.

Dr Kwame Adu-Bonsaffoh said despite the higher level of education, there was still insufficient knowledge, lack of prior use and lingering fears about side effects such as post contraceptive infertility among women.

Dr Adu-Bonsaffoh who is a senior medical officer at Korle Bu, said this to the GNA in Dakar when he made a presentation on “Integrating family planning with maternal near miss: Another missed opportunity?”, at the just ended second international conference on Family Planning.

The conference was attended by over 2,200 researchers, program managers, clinicians, parliamentarians, policy makers and jurists, shared best practices and progress on national strategies to deliver family planning services, with the ultimate goal to provide a universal access to family planning.

Participants examined the 'cutting edge' research and programs that are helping to advance the health and wealth of families and nations worldwide.

The conference, which was on the theme “Family Planning: Research and Best Practices” was co-hosted by the Bill and Melinda Gates, Institute for Population and Reproductive Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Government of Senegal’s Ministry of Health and Prevention, along with the UNFPA, World Bank, World Health Organization and USAID.

Dr Bonsaffoh explained that due to the medical conditions of those women, they stayed longer at the hospital allowing time for family planning counseling and provision.

He defined "Maternal near miss" as a woman who nearly died but survived a complication that occurred during pregnancy, childbirth or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy.

He said a study, which was conducted in Korle Bu Teaching Hospital between October 2010 and March 2011, interviewed 36 women.

The objective of the study was to explore the future fertility intentions, use of family planning methods and reasons for not wanting to use contraception among a group of women who had traumatic delivery experiences ranging from complications a the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra.

Dr Bonsaffoh said out of 36 women with the average educational background as junior high school, 20 reported that they would like to have more children and 14 women reported that they would like to limit childbearing.

He said of the 20 women who would like to continue childbearing, more than half of them wanted to space childbearing.

Dr Bonsaffoh explained that some educated women in the urban setting still lacked information on contraceptives, saying that “These women represent an important group to target for increasing contraceptive uptake and that their high desire to learn and use family planning underlines the need for such services and we have take advantage of that”.