Family planning is a term used for a couple making conscious effort to limit or space in the number of children they want by means of different contraceptive methods. Contraceptive prevalence rates provide the most acceptable and obvious measures to check for the success of the family planning program.
According to the PDHS report for the survey of 2012-2013 it shows that the use of contraceptives is noticeably more in currently married women of urban areas as compare to the currently married of rural areas. To be specific its 45% in urban area and 31% in rural area.
If we look into the graph below its very obvious that the overall use of contraceptives all methods is higher among urban population except the Injectable method and LAM method which is higher in rural areas. However for the pill method it’s almost same for both the areas.
Among the modern methods Female sterilization and use of condoms are the most preferred methods and among the traditional methods withdrawal method is mostly preferred in both the areas.
The currently married women using the modern method of contraceptives also reported few side effects; the percentage of occurrence of these side effects is higher in rural areas as compare to urban areas except for weight gain/obesity which is more commonly reported among urban women. The source of treatment for these side effects of contraceptive use was observed in the survey and it is reported that treatment from a professional skilled person is more common in urban area and from a non-professional non skilled person is more common in rural area.
Contraceptive discontinuation rates are also reported but a comparable data is not available for urban and rural areas.
The need and demand for family planning among currently married women of rural and urban areas was questioned and the reports make it clear that the demand for family planning methods is more in urban areas which is 62% as compare to rural area which is 52%. It is visible from the graph below that family planning methods are mostly needed when the couple wants to limit their number of children as compare to for spacing between the children.
