Availability and Quality of Family Planning Services in the City of Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo

Abstract

Introduction: The long-term availability of contraceptive methods and the provision of quality planning services are bedrock for increasing contraceptive prevalence. The objectives of this study are to determine the coverage and availability of family planning (FP) services, as well as to evaluate the quality of these services in the city of Lubumbashi. Methods: From May to June 2017, we carried out a descriptive transversal study in several health facilities (HF) in the city of Lubumbashi. We have comprehensively included all the health facilities we have identified. The data were collected by interviews, documentary analyses and observation, guided by a questionnaire. We calculated the proportions for the different variables and the quality was evaluated using the score we built for this purpose. Results: Our study involved 570 health facilities. The coverage for family planning services was 0.7/10,000 inhabitants. Their availability was 29.6% among the visited structures; 10.1% of HF had no contraceptives in stock, 10.1% had one to two contraceptives and 79.9% had three or more. The quality of FP services was good in the majority (82%) of HF, average in 12% and poor in 6% of the cases. Conclusion: The coverage of FP services and their availability in the city of Lubumbashi were low. The quality of family planning services was good in most health facilities offering FP services. Improving coverage and availability of family planning services in Lubumbashi, as well as the innovation of the most appropriate supply strategies, is essential to increase contraceptive prevalence.

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“…These differences might be due to the methods adopted in the two types of research, as the later research was carried out among the consumers, particularly women while this research was carried out from the facility base, it also differed in the modern Contraceptive Prevalence Rate (mCPR) where they reported that there is a very low mCPR contrary to the finding in this research which found out that there is a high availability family planning services and modern contraceptives. This is not unexpected as the private health sector has a high tendency to stock their facilities with modern contraceptives due to the relative high patronage reported @ECRTD-UK: https://www.eajournals.org/ (Charless, et al, 2019), while in Malawi, Kenya and Haiti, the availability of family planning services was higher than the one observed in plateau state Nigeria with 83%, 88% and 84% respectively of health facilities surveyed (Charless, et al, 2019). Among all the listed contraceptives available in the family planning units of the private health facilities, oral contraceptive pills were the highest available in 78.1% of the entire facilities understudy, this is however not surprising as the private health facilities will always want to maintain their customers at the same time maintain profit-making to ensure the availability of family planning services through the purchase of the most affordable modern contraceptive; oral pills.…”

Kualitas Pelayanan Keluarga Berencana Mempengaruhi Kepuasan Akseptor di Masa Pandemi Covid-19

“…Hasil yang berbeda dari penelitian di Pakistan Tahun 2020 bahwa kepuasan akseptor KB sebelum dan sesudah pandemi Covid-19 adalah 90% 24 . Penelitian di Kongo Tahun 2019 sebelum pandemi Covid-19 menyatakan bahwa 82% layanan KB berkualitas meskipun di Kongo pemanfaatan KB adalah rendah 31 . Kondisi kualitas layanan KB selama pandemi Covid-19 di Indonesia sejauh ini belum ada data atau penelitian yang terpublikasi hingga saat ini.…”