Family-planning services in a low-performing rural area of Bangladesh: Insights from field observations

This paper mainly reports the results of an observational study carried out during 1994-1995 in five rural unions of Bangladesh to identify the barrie rs to adoption of family-planning methods. At the time of the survey, one-f ifth of 1,889 mothers with a living child, aged less than five years, were practising modem family-planning methods. Of the methods used, oral pill wa s the most common (50%), followed by injectables (20%), female sterilizatio n (13%), IUD (11%), and condom (4%). Various factors that were responsible for the low performance of the family-planning programme included: inadequa cy of motivational work by the field workers, poor counselling on the manag ement of contraceptive-related side-effects, inadequate response to the nee ds of clients, irregular field visits, and poor supervision and monitoring. The efficiency of the programme needs to be improved to meet the demand fo r family-planning methods in Chakaria, Bangladesh.