KNOWLEDGE AND PERCEPTION OF EMERGENCY CONTRACEPTIVES AMONG FEMALE ENGINEERING STUDENTS IN THE TERTIARY INSTITUTION BENIN, BENIN CITY

ABSTRACT

Emergency contraceptives (ECN) can significantly reduce the rate of unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions especially in sub-Saharan Africa. The aim of this study is to assess the knowledge and perception of emergency contraceptives among female engineering students in a tertiaryinstitution Benin, Benin city.A descriptive survey was employed in this study and simple random technique was used to select wards and the respondents. A well-structured questionnaire was distributed among one hundred and thirty five female undergraduate students in the faculty of engineering which was analyzed statistically using SPSS(version 21) software and was presented in tables. The hypothesis tested for the relationship between knowledge and perception of ECPS among female engineering students revealed that 5.0% of the respondents have good knowledge,22.0% have Fair knowledge, while the remaining 73.0% have poor knowledge. This implies that the respondents have poor knowledge of ECPs. Hypothesis tested for the revealed that <18yrs 8(88.9%) of them have poor knowledge,14(11.1%) have fair knowledge, while none of them have good knowledge of ECPs. For the age group 19-24yrs,44(70.5%)have poor knowledge, 184(23.1%) have fair knowledge.   5(6.4%) have good knowledge of ECPs for age group 25-35yrs ,10(76.9%)have poor knowledge.34(23.1% ) have fair knowledge, while none have good knowledge of ECPs. This implies that age group 19-24yrs have better knowledge ECPs than other age groups. The findings from this study shows that there is no significant relationship between the knowledge of the respondents and their perception towards the use ECPs,and no relationship between the knowledge of the use of ECPs of the respondents and their age. Hence, there is the need for proper and adequate sensitization of females in the use of contraceptives, policies and programmes that promote consistent emergency contraceptive use among women of reproductive age should be encouraged and implemented, government’s intervention in promoting family planning services and as much as possible the provision of free emergency contraceptives.

Keywords: emergency contraceptives, knowledge, perception