Abstract

Family Planning was defined by the World Health Organization as a voluntary and informed decision
by an individual or couple on the number of children to have and when to have them. According to the
2013 WHO facts sheet on Family Planning, “it was achieved mainly through the use of various
contraceptive methods and treatment of involuntary infertility. The intervention for family planning
reveals a contraceptive prevalence of 43. 1% which was way below the national target of 50% by 2020.
This leaves 4 in 10 sexually active Ugandan women not using any form of contraception, including 3 in
10 who express a desire to delay childbearing. This study intended to assess factors influencing the
utilization of family planning services at Fort Portal Regional Referral Hospital, Western Uganda. A
cross-sectional, descriptive and analytical hospital-based study design was used to get 174 men and
women of the reproductive age group at Fort Portal Regional Referral Hospital based on the Fischer et
al., (1990) formula and the targeted 100% response rate was obtained however due to knowledge gaps,
not all questions were answered 100% but a valid percentage was considered for the questions answered.
Self-administered questionnaires were used, data was entered and reviewed for faults using Microsoft
Excel, and after transferred to STATA version 20 for analysis, presented in frequency and percentage
charts and tables with P-values and Odds ratios and their respective Confidence intervals where
necessary. According to the findings, the proportion of people who use contraceptives was 44.91% of
the participants at Fort Portal Regional Referral Hospital in Western Uganda. In multivariate analysis,
socio-demographic factors like the education level of respondents that was to say tertiary had a P-value
of 0.004[COR(CI; 95%);1.00 (65-3.09)], place of residence that was to say urban had a P-value of
0.003[COR(CI; 95%); 1.94 (1.35-4.92)], obstetric factors like history of abortion had a P-value of
0.001[COR(CI; 95%); 2.15 (1.04-4.51)], and medical factors like HIV had a P-value of 0.028[COR(CI;
95%); 1.94 (1.35-4.92)], and were significant and considered for the discussion because they had a P-value
of less than or equal to 0.05. The utilization of family planning services at Fort Portal Regional Referral
Hospital remains low at 44.91% in comparison to the national target which is 50% as per Uganda.
Similarly, socio-demographic factors like level of education and place of residency, obstetric factors like
history of abortion and medical factors like HIV significantly influence the utilization of family planning
services at Fort Portal Regional Referral Hospital in Western Uganda.
Keywords: Family Planning services, Contraceptive methods, Childbearing, Women