Quality of care and contraceptive pill discontinuation in rural Egypt

Indicators of family planning service access and quality were generated usi ng the Egypt DHS-I (1988) and the Egypt Service Availability Survey (1989), and linked to episodes of contraceptive pill use. Multilevel analysis was used to ascertain whether or not these access and quality indicators influe nce the continuation of pill use, net of women's socioeconomic, demographic and motivational characteristics. A model with random components at the cl uster and women levels was fitted for all reasons of discontinuation, excep t desire for pregnancy, at 24 months of use. Net of women's background char acteristics, the results show that facilities with smaller numbers of healt h personnel trained in family planning, a lack of access to facilities with female doctors and a lack of range of available methods are associated wit h a high risk of discontinuation of pill use for all reasons except desire for pregnancy.