Utilization of contraception among sexually active HIV positive women attending art clinic in University of Gondar Hospital: a hospital based cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND Contraception helps to prevent unplanned pregnancies among human immune virus positive women. The contraceptive utilization status and associated factors were not well addressed in the study area. Therefore, this study aimed to assess utilization of contraceptives and associated factors among human immune virus positive reproductive age group women appearing at anti-retroviral therapy clinic at the University of Gondar Hospital, North West Ethiopia. METHOD An institution based cross-sectional study was conducted among 397 systematically selected HIV positive reproductive age women who visited ART unit of the University of Gondar teaching referral hospital from January 8-20, 2014. The data were collected using pre tested and structured questionnaires through face-to-face interviews. The data were entered into Epi-Info version 3.5, and cleaned and analyzed using SPSS version 20. Descriptive summary of the data and logistic regression were used to identify possible predictors using odds ratio with 95 % confidence interval and P-value of 0.05. RESULTS The study revealed that the overall utilization of any type of contraception was 50 %. Of them, 4.1 % got contraception from anti-retroviral therapy unit. Fear of side effects was the most common (42 %) reason for not using contraception. Women who attended secondary education, married and who had 4-6 children were more likely to use contraception than their counterparts were; (AOR: 5.63; 95 % CI: 1.74-18.21), (AOR: 8.07; 95 % CI: 3.10-20.99) and (AOR: 3.61; 95 % CI: 1.16-11.26) respectively. However, Women between 35-49 years, had no intention to have another child and discordant couples were 83 %, 76 % and 65 % less likely to use contraception respectively than their counterparts. CONCLUSIONS The results of this study revealed that the utilization of contraception was low. Women between 35-49 years, those who had no intention to have another child and whose partner was HIV sero-negative and fear of side effect of the contraception played an important role for not using contraception. Therefore, there is a need to give attention about integration of family planning service with HIV care and support service.