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Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices of Contraception among Afghan Refugee Women in Pakistan: A Cross-Sectional Study

BACKGROUND: During the 1980s, approximately three million people migrated from Afghanistan to Pakistan and sought refuge in several cities including the city of Karachi. After the initial settlement of the refugees, the international organizations transitioned the health care of these refugees to th...

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Autores principales: Raheel, Hina, Karim, Mehtab S., Saleem, Sarah, Bharwani, Sulaiman
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2012
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3487847/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23133658
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0048760
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author Raheel, Hina
Karim, Mehtab S.
Saleem, Sarah
Bharwani, Sulaiman
author_facet Raheel, Hina
Karim, Mehtab S.
Saleem, Sarah
Bharwani, Sulaiman
author_sort Raheel, Hina
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: During the 1980s, approximately three million people migrated from Afghanistan to Pakistan and sought refuge in several cities including the city of Karachi. After the initial settlement of the refugees, the international organizations transitioned the health care of these refugees to the two local non-profit service agencies in Karachi. One of these agencies subsidized health care to the refugees under their care and the other agency encouraged the refugees under their care to utilize governmental and non-governmental private health resources at the disposal of general public. Our objective was to measure the effect of health subsidy on the uptake of contraception among Afghan refugee women and compare them to the group of Afghan women without such a subsidy. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: A randomly selected group of 650 married Afghan women-325 women in each group-participated in a detailed survey regarding the knowledge, attitude and practices of family planning and contraceptive use. 90 percent of the women in the health subsidy group had had heard of family planning, compared to the 45 percent in the non-subsidized group. The use of contraceptives was greater than two-fold in the former versus the latter. Results of logistic regression analysis revealed that the refugee women who had had access to subsidized healthcare were significantly more likely to use the contraceptive methods with advancing age as compared to the women in the non-health subsidy group. The difference remained significant after adjusting for other variables. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Refugee women who are provided subsidized healthcare are more inclined to use contraceptives. It is therefore important that Afghan refugee women living elsewhere in Pakistan be provided healthcare subsidy, whereby their reproductive health indicators could improve with reduced fertility. We strongly encourage facilities introducing such subsidies to refugees in resource poor settings to assess the impact through similar inquiry.
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spelling pubmed-34878472012-11-06 Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices of Contraception among Afghan Refugee Women in Pakistan: A Cross-Sectional Study Raheel, Hina Karim, Mehtab S. Saleem, Sarah Bharwani, Sulaiman PLoS One Research Article BACKGROUND: During the 1980s, approximately three million people migrated from Afghanistan to Pakistan and sought refuge in several cities including the city of Karachi. After the initial settlement of the refugees, the international organizations transitioned the health care of these refugees to the two local non-profit service agencies in Karachi. One of these agencies subsidized health care to the refugees under their care and the other agency encouraged the refugees under their care to utilize governmental and non-governmental private health resources at the disposal of general public. Our objective was to measure the effect of health subsidy on the uptake of contraception among Afghan refugee women and compare them to the group of Afghan women without such a subsidy. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: A randomly selected group of 650 married Afghan women-325 women in each group-participated in a detailed survey regarding the knowledge, attitude and practices of family planning and contraceptive use. 90 percent of the women in the health subsidy group had had heard of family planning, compared to the 45 percent in the non-subsidized group. The use of contraceptives was greater than two-fold in the former versus the latter. Results of logistic regression analysis revealed that the refugee women who had had access to subsidized healthcare were significantly more likely to use the contraceptive methods with advancing age as compared to the women in the non-health subsidy group. The difference remained significant after adjusting for other variables. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Refugee women who are provided subsidized healthcare are more inclined to use contraceptives. It is therefore important that Afghan refugee women living elsewhere in Pakistan be provided healthcare subsidy, whereby their reproductive health indicators could improve with reduced fertility. We strongly encourage facilities introducing such subsidies to refugees in resource poor settings to assess the impact through similar inquiry. Public Library of Science 2012-11-02 /pmc/articles/PMC3487847/ /pubmed/23133658 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0048760 Text en © 2012 Raheel et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Raheel, Hina
Karim, Mehtab S.
Saleem, Sarah
Bharwani, Sulaiman
Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices of Contraception among Afghan Refugee Women in Pakistan: A Cross-Sectional Study
title Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices of Contraception among Afghan Refugee Women in Pakistan: A Cross-Sectional Study
title_full Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices of Contraception among Afghan Refugee Women in Pakistan: A Cross-Sectional Study
title_fullStr Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices of Contraception among Afghan Refugee Women in Pakistan: A Cross-Sectional Study
title_full_unstemmed Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices of Contraception among Afghan Refugee Women in Pakistan: A Cross-Sectional Study
title_short Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices of Contraception among Afghan Refugee Women in Pakistan: A Cross-Sectional Study
title_sort knowledge, attitudes and practices of contraception among afghan refugee women in pakistan: a cross-sectional study
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3487847/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23133658
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0048760
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