FAMILY-PLANNING PRACTICES BEFORE AND AFTER CHILDBIRTH IN LUSAKA, ZAMBIA

A total of 408 randomly selected normally delivered women who had give n birth to healthy infants were recruited from a postnatal ward at the University Teaching Hospital (UTH) in Lusaka, Zambia, Family planning practices before and after pregnancy and delivery were investigated a mong 376 of these women, The interviews were conducted in their homes or at the postpartum clinic at the UTH at the end of puerperium. The r emaining 32 women, mainly primiparae, were lost to follow up. Thirty f our percent of the women had used a family planning method before the present childbirth, Most of those (90%) had used modern methods, Women with eight and more years of education used modern contraceptive meth ods more often than those with less education, One year after delivery , 64% of the women were using modern or traditional family planning me thods, Of those who used traditional methods, 15% relied on lactationa l amenorrhoea, Of those who did not use any method, 39% indicated that their husbands did not allow them, Fifty-six per cent of the teenager s stated that they had no knowledge of family planning, whereas 84% of the single teenagers had not used contraceptives before, In view of t his, teenagers and single mothers need a special focus in the developm ent of family planning programmes. We also recommend that more researc h should focus on views of both men and women on contraceptive use.