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Contraceptive practices of women living in rural areas of Bihar.

A prospective survey of 972 married (sexually active) women living in rural areas of Lalganj block of Vaishali district in Bihar state of India was carried out. The study was aimed at obtaining first hand information from the rural women regarding their contraceptive practices and to use the information thus gained to identify those spheres of concern where greater attention needs to be paid to make the family planning system more efficient. The population investigated consisted of women attending the combined obstetric and gynaecology clinic located at Lalganj. Tubal sterilisation was the commonest method of contraception among women surveyed ( 20.6 per cent of women). The incidence of sterilisation increased significantly as the age increased-11.6 per cent of women aged 21 to 30 had tubal sterilisation, whereas the incidence was 51 per cent in women aged 31 to 40 years. Reversible forms of contraception (IUD, oral pills and condoms) were used by only 6.8 per cent of women included in the study. Married girls aged 15 to 20 were not using any contraceptive. It was also noted that none of the women surveyed had used any contraceptive prior to her first pregnancy. Fortyper cent of women in the age group 21 to 30 years and a similar percentage (41.1 per cent) in the age group 31 to 40 years had two or more live children but did not use any contraceptive. The results reveal that tubal sterilisation is the most popular method of contraception among women living in rural areas of the state. Birth spacing, or delaying the birth of the first child by the use of reversible forms of contraception, is not the common practice among these women.