Ghana has made great progress in meeting most Millennium Development Goals; 1 however, the country's reproductive health indicators continue to lag. Among married women, use of modern contraceptives is low (23%) and unmet need for family planning remains high (26%). 2 Similarly, the total fertility rate decreased only slightly between 1998 and 2008, from 4.4 to 4.0. 3 As a result, the Ghanaian government has identified increasing contraceptive prevalence as a priority. 4Among the reasons for low use of contraceptives in Ghana are barriers to access, stock-outs and a shortage of trained health staff.5 These problems are more acute in rural areas of the country, where health facilities tend to be few and the distribution chain is often weaker-conditions that contribute to an urban-rural disparity in contraceptive use and unmet need. 3 In addition, access to communitybased family planning services is limited outside of select hard-to-reach areas where nurses have been mandated to provide family planning as part of the Community-Based Health Planning and Services (CHPS) model. CHPS zones are currently being scaled up, but as of 2011, only 22% of the population was being served under CHPS. 6In many countries, private-sector drug shops are the first place people seek health care, especially in areas with few health facilities or pharmacies. [7][8][9][10] In Ghana, such shops are called licensed chemical sellers and are independent businesses operated by nonpharmacists who have a minimum of a secondary education and are licensed by the Pharmacy Council to sell some over-the-counter medicines. Shop operators sometimes receive training from the Licensed Chemical Seller Association and Pharmacy Council, but it is not required to obtain a license. As privately owned enterprises, licensed chemical seller shops are positioned to provide socially marketed family planning methods using their existing infrastructure, which is sustained by the sale of other health products. Most pill and condom users in Ghana (75% and 54%, respectively) receive their contraceptives from such shops; however, the country's most popular method-the threemonth injectable contraceptive, depot medroxyprogesterone acetate or DMPA-is a prescription drug and is available only from a qualified medical provider or for purchase, but not injection, from a pharmacy.3 Most injectable users (87%) rely on public-sector health facilities to receive their injections, even though these facilities often experience stock-outs of the method.

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a b s t r a c t a r t i c l e i n f o Keywords:Depot medroxyprogesterone acetate Family planning Geospatial analysis Ghana Geographic information systems Licensed chemical sellers Objectives:To map access to depot medroxyprogesterone acetate (DMPA) from licensed chemical sellers (LCS); to estimate the proportion of women of reproductive age in areas with access; and to examine affordability and variability of costs. Methods: A geospatial analysis was conducted using data collected from 298 women who purchased DMPA from 49 geocoded LCS shops in the Amansie West and Ejisu-Juabeng districts of Ghana from June 4 to August 31, 2012. The women reported on cost and average distance traveled to purchase DMPA. Results: In Amansie West, 21.1% of all women of reproductive age lived within average walking distance and 80.4% lived within average driving distance of an LCS. In Ejisu-Juabeng, 41.9% and 60.1% of women lived within average walking and driving distance, respectively. Distribution of affordability varied across each district. Conclusions: Access to LCS shops is high, and training LCS to administer DMPA would increase access to family planning in Ghana, with associated time and cost savings.