Reasons for Low Use of Modern Spacing Methods in a High Fertility State "Bihar" in Northern India and Its Potentials

Vishal D. Shastri, BBC Media Action

Background: Bihar is India’s most populous states with highest TFR and low CPR. BBC Media Action is implementing a 5 yr. grant from BMGF to shape demand and practices around 9 family-health behaviours including FP. Present paper is based on analysis of benchmarking survey data on spacing. Methodology: Evaluation adopts a pretest-posttest design. A multi-staged cluster sampling used, sample size of 7646 respondents was spread across 200 PSUs from Bihar. Findings: Findings suggest a very low use of modern-spacing-methods (6%) and significant shift from ever-use and current-use of modern spacing methods. Women have shifted from modern to natural methods due to various myths and misconceptions. Not liking the methods and fear of side effects were reported as reasons for non-use and shift. 2/3 women expressed unmet need (limiting 40%; spacing 27%). Program lessons learned: Identifying women with unmet need, promoting spousal communication and IPC around myths could be potential strategy.