Potential Barriers to Contraceptive Use. Several factors—economic, attitudinal, past experience or known experience of others, environmental and cultural—could hinder an individual from accessing FP services. Attempts were made in this study to examine the existence of conditions that could become potential barriers to accessing contraceptive services and how the SMS intervention assisted to ameliorate these conditions. Respondents were asked to agree or disagree with some statements that are indicative of facilitators or barriers to contraceptive use. These statements cover issues related to discomfort around obtaining condom when needed (male youth), or going to a health facility for contraception, affordability of services, attitudes and behavior of service providers, distance to service-delivery points and cost of transportation, and confidence in facility health service providers to provide needed assistance. Agreements or disagreements with these statements reflect how the respondents think, what they believe or what they have experienced that could either facilitate or hinder contraceptive use. While agreements with some statements are indicative of facilitators to contraceptive use, agreements with others are indicative of barriers to contraceptive use. Data on levels of agreement and disagreement with the selected statements are presented in tables 3.9.1 (for male youth) and 3.9.2 (for female youth) in the annex. Tables 3.9.1 and 3.9.2 show that at both baseline and endline, and for both male and female youth, the overwhelming majority of respondents (in most cases more than 8 of 10 respondents) agreed with statements that are indicative of facilitators and disagreed with statements that are indicative of barriers. That is: • At endline, about 90% of male youth did not see anything embarrassing about going to the health facility to obtain condoms, and a similar percentage of female youth did not see anything embarrassing about going to the health facility for contraception. Probably because high percentages of youth already expressed comfort about going to the health facility to obtain condom/contraception at baseline, these percentage changed little during the SMS interventions. The percentages of male and female youth who reported to have been treated with disrespect by a health worker in the past are low. At baseline the percentages who felt disrespected by a health worker at any time before the survey are 19.1% among males with children, 8.7% among males without children, 22.2% among...
Potential Barriers to Contraceptive Use. Among Males Going to a facility for condom is embarrassing A health provider has treated you with disrespect in the past If you have questions or concerns about contraception, you trust the health worker at the health facility to help you Transportation is readily available if you need to travel to get condom Do you know where you can go to get methods to prevent pregnancy? Number of cases 131 139 - 126 118 -
