Assessment of Needs and Barriers that Challenge Reproductive Health/ Family Planning Program in Jordan

Despite the increase in contraceptive prevalence, some 137 million women worldwide still have unmet needs for contraception and another 64 million are using traditional methods that are less reliable. Overall, 29% of women in developing countries have an unmet need for modern contraception.

 

The number of women requiring reproductive health services in developing countries is increasing at a high rate; this could be due to rapid population growth as well as demand expansion.

 

A study of barriers to family planning service use among the urban poor in Pakistan has shown that the greatest obstacles to family planning use were the socio-cultural barriers; the second most commonly reported barriers were administrative barriers. Economic barriers were reported by only 15% of women. Few women reported physical access and cognitive barriers.

 

Recent research on the barriers faced accessing reproductive health services, recognized that problems of access extend beyond physical access to services, to include issues of economic, administrative, cognitive and psychosocial access.

 

Furthermore, the barriers to family planning service use are seen as extending beyond factors operating at the individual and household levels, to include characteristics of the social and cultural environment and the health service infrastructure.

 

In the last decade the population in Jordan has grown annually by 2.5% in average, at this rate the population is expected to double by the year 2032, subsequently female numbers in their reproductive age( 15-49 years) will increase from 1.3 millions by the year 2004 to 2 millions by the year 2020.

 

In spite of the efforts made in Jordan to achieve the goals of the National Population Strategy, the total fertility rate (TFR) dropped by just 0.1% during the last 5 years.

 

The main reasons for not currently using a contraceptive method as reported by non users in Jordan were the desire for more children (34%), current pregnancy combined with being in the postpartum period or lactating (28%) and fear of side effects (7%).

 

Most of the available information about needs and barriers for family planning services were either extracted from brain storming meetings or small focus group discussions. This appears to limit the generalizability of the findings on the whole population. So the need arises for conducting a research to address the views of a larger sample of concerned population using and providing health services in all

governorates with special representation of the sample to certain areas or districts having specific demographic and geographic characteristics.

 

Another justification of the study is to update the already available information and to fill the gaps of the existing knowledge to gain better understanding of particular barriers to family planning services which will be valuable for developing service promotion strategies and for informing service delivery protocols.