Abstract

Background; Promoting the use of contraceptive methods to prevent unwanted pregnancies is one of the most effective strategies to reduce abortion rates and maternal morbidity and mortality. Therefore, providing post-abortion family planning services that include structured contraceptive counseling with free and easy access to contraceptive methods is mandatory to break the vicious cycle between abortion and unintended pregnancy. Objective; to assess prevalence of post abortion contraceptive utilization and its associated factors among women came for abortion service in health institutions at Gambella town, south West Ethiopia 2015. Methods: Institutional based cross-sectional study was undertaken in one referral hospital, one health center and 4 private health institutions found in Gambella town from January 1st – March 30, 2015. Three hundred ninety-nine (399) study participants were included and systematic random sampling technique was used to select the study population. The data was collected by using Interview based pretested questionnaire. The collected data were entered in SPPSS version 21 for cleaning, processing and analysis. Frequency distribution Bivariate and multivariate logistic regression were done to identify the associated factors. Result; the post abortion utilization rate was 74.4%. Women with the age groups 20 -25 had 1.6 [(OR= 1.6, 95%CI (0.99, 2.39) times higher odds of Post abortion family planning utilization than the 20-24 age groups Respondents that have educational status of tertiary and above and those who counseled were 2.1 [(OR= 2.1, 95%CI (1.30, 3.36) and 3.3 [(OR= 3.3, 95%CI (1.9, 5.6) higher odds of post abortion family planning utilization than the illiterates and those didn’t counseled respectively. Conclusion and Recommendation; post abortion family planningutilization is relatively good but not satisfactory. Age, marital status, Educational status, PAFP counseling and previous history of abortion were the significant factors to PAFP utilization. The ministry of education should have to give due emphasis to increase the educational status of women and since most of the women with history of previous abortion didn’t utilize PAFP, health professionals should have to give sufficient education on the purpose of contraception.