IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0048760.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

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

Author

Listed:
  • Hina Raheel
  • Mehtab S Karim
  • Sarah Saleem
  • Sulaiman Bharwani

Abstract

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Hina Raheel & Mehtab S Karim & Sarah Saleem & Sulaiman Bharwani, 2012. "Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices of Contraception among Afghan Refugee Women in Pakistan: A Cross-Sectional Study," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(11), pages 1-7, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0048760
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0048760
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0048760
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0048760&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0048760?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jacques van der Gaag & Vid Stimac, 2012. "How can we increase resources for health care in the developing world? Is (subsidized) voluntary health insurance the answer?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(1), pages 55-61, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Komal Urooj & Tusawar Iftikhar Ahmad & Muhammad Azhar Bhatti & Altaf Hussain, 2022. "Drivers of Family Planning Services Utilization in Pakistan: A Literature Survey and Recent Trends in Contraceptive Use," iRASD Journal of Economics, International Research Alliance for Sustainable Development (iRASD), vol. 4(2), pages 275-295, June.
    2. Somjet Srikanok & Daniel M Parker & Amber L Parker & Tracey Lee & Aung Myat Min & Pranee Ontuwong & Saw Oo Tan & Supachai Sirinonthachai & Rose McGready, 2017. "Empirical lessons regarding contraception in a protracted refugee setting: A descriptive study from Maela camp on the Thai-Myanmar border 1996 – 2015," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(2), pages 1-15, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Emily Gustafsson-Wright & Gosia Popławska & Zlata Tanović & Jacques Gaag, 2018. "The impact of subsidized private health insurance and health facility upgrades on healthcare utilization and spending in rural Nigeria," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 18(3), pages 221-276, September.
    2. Marie H. Martin & Meg Streams, 2015. "Punctuated Equilibrium Theory: An Empirical Investigation of Its Relevance for Global Health Expenditure," Public Budgeting & Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(1), pages 73-94, March.
    3. Geng, Xin & Janssens, Wendy & Kramer, Berber & van der List, Marijn, 2018. "Health insurance, a friend in need? Impacts of formal insurance and crowding out of informal insurance," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 196-210.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0048760. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.