Abstract:
BACKGROUND: - Unintended pregnancy is an important public health problem of women of
child bearing age, because of their negative outcomes on health and of social for both mothers
and children. Unintended pregnancy contributes to high maternal mortality and morbidity in
Ethiopia, a country striving to reduce Maternal Mortality.
OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study is to determine the magnitude of unintended
pregnancy and identify associated factors among ever pregnant women in Bitta woreda,
Southwest Ethiopia.
METHODS: A community based cross sectional study was conducted among 770 randomly
selected women of reproductive age group (15-49 years) who had been ever pregnant. A
multistage sampling technique was used to select study participants. Data were checked for
completeness, consistency, coded and entered into Epidata (version 3.1) and exported to SPSS
version 20 for analysis. Univarate, bivariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were
used to analyze the data.
RESULT: The overall prevalence of unintended pregnancy was 36.5 % (26% for mistimed and
10.5% for unwanted).
Unintended pregnancy was associated with travel time to family planning service area
(AOR=2.23(1.37-3.63)), modern contraceptive practice (AOR=2.43(1.22-4.86)), perceived
women‘s autonomy (AOR=0.47(0.31-0.72)), parity (AOR=5.52(2.50-12.20)) and with ideal
number of children (AOR=0.15(0.08-0.31)).
CONCLUSION: A significant prevalence of unintended pregnancy was observed in the study
population. Factors that found to have association with unintended pregnancy were travel time to
family planning service area, modern contraceptive practice, perceived women‘s autonomy,
parity and ideal number of children.
