Abstract:
Contraceptives offer protection against unwanted pregnancy and some sexually
transmitted infections including HIV. Interventions to promote contraceptive use are
efforts to reduce complications and deaths from unwanted pregnancy and to slow the
spread of HIV/AIDS transmission. This study sought to determine the prevalence
and factors associated with uptake of contraceptives among undergraduate students
at (JKUAT), given that majority of the students fall in 18-35 year’s age bracket. A
cross-sectional study design was used which adopted quantitative (through selfadministered questionnaires) and qualitative (through KII) approaches. A sample
size of 436 was used for the quantitative and 3 staff from the health center for the
qualitative data. Quantitative data was entered into STATA v 9.2 (Strata Corp LP,
Texas, and USA) and cleaned prior to analysis. Factors associated with contraceptive
use were analyzed using both bivariate and multivariate analysis. The data from KII
was subjected to a manual thematic content analysis using general purpose software
tools using Microsoft Word. The findings of this study revealed that among 436
students, 55% (240) had experienced sexual intercourse. The overall level of
contraceptives use was low 34.2% (149).The level of awareness on contraceptives
was 96.1%. Contraceptive service provider attitude (P=0.001),
affordability/accessibility/safety (P=0.001) and reason for use (P=0.001) were
significantly associated with contraceptive uptake. Majority (72%) of students are
involved in risky sexual behaviour practices. Condom was the most commonly used
contraceptive (54.8%). Majority of students (60%) obtain contraceptives over the
counter in pharmacies. It was concluded that the uptake of contraceptive remains
relatively low (34%) despite the high level of awareness (96.1%). Contraceptive
costs, availability, sources, provider’s attitude and students’ contraceptive attitude
and practices play a great role in contraceptive uptake. It was recommended that
more enhanced contraceptive information is required aimed at improving the attitude
of students and health care providers for the purposes of contraceptive dissemination
and use. Strategies to educate the university students on benefits of contraceptive use
should be developed by university management and ministry of health to improve
acceptability and utilization of the services.
