Persistently Poor Contraceptive Uptake by Adolescents: Finding from Reviews of Contraceptive Uptake in a Family Planning Unit in Yenagoa, Nigeria

Background: Adolescent contraceptive uptake is low despite significant threat posed by pregnancy to the health and lives of adolescent girls in developing countries.

Methodology: A comparison of analysed data from three retrospective descriptive studies on patterns of contraceptive uptake between 2014 and 2020 at the Federal Medical Centre Yenagoa, Nigeria.

Results: Trend showed persistently poor contraceptive uptake by adolescents. Just 0.19% of uptakers of reversible contraceptives between 2014 and 2018 were adolescents. Only one adolescent out of 253 clients took up Implanon during the same period and there was zero-uptake of any form of long-acting contraceptive by adolescent girls between 2016 and 2020. During the same period in the same setting, 4.8% of manual vacuum aspirations for incomplete abortion, were done in adolescent girls between the ages of 15-19 years.

Conclusion: Concerted efforts are required to scale up awareness programmes on contraception in adolescents. More adolescent friendly contraception clinics need to be created and more health workers and grassroot sensitizers, trained in adolescent sexual and reproductive health are required.