Contraceptive Awareness Among Urban Adolescent Girls at Ilemela Municipality Mwanza Region

Abstract

This study intends to assess contraceptive awareness among urban sexually active adolescent girls at Ilemela Municipal in Mwanza Region, in Tanzania. The study used a cross-sectional research design to investigate the awareness of contraceptives among urban girls, whereby purposive and convenient sampling techniques were used for the selection of participants. The target population was 175 students randomly selected through simple random sampling techniques. In this study, data were collected using a questionnaire and analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS).

The results show that 59.7% of respondents were unaware of any contraceptive methods, while only 40.3% reported being familiar with one or more contraceptives. Regression analysis showed that factors like access to information and educational interventions significantly correlate with increased awareness levels (p < 0.05). Injection was identified as the most recognized method, known to 52.2% of participants. Despite some awareness, the reliance was moderately high on informal and potentially unreliable sources, such as friends and media, predominantly television (37.7%) and newspapers (26.4%). The study thus recommends that the government, as the primary stakeholder in the provision of health services in the country, should make sure that it collaborates with various stakeholders in creating awareness on contraceptive use and debunk the view that contraceptive use is contrary to social or religious norms.  Targeted educational programs and comprehensive reproductive health education tailored for adolescents could effectively enhance reproductive health knowledge, including contraceptive awareness.