The Prevalence of Unintended Pregnancy and Its Association with Unmet Need of Contraception among Reproductive Age Women: An Analysis of the 2016 Uganda Demographic Health Survey (UDHS)

Abstract Introduction Unintended pregnancy and unmet contraceptive needs continue to be a public health concern, contributing to maternal morbidity and mortality in developing countries. Several studies have been done to assess the determinant of unintended pregnancies in the last decade. However, representative research exploring the association between unplanned pregnancy and unmet contraceptive needs among Ugandan women of reproductive age is inadequate. This study aims to measure unmet contraception needs and its relationship with unintended pregnancy and other factors in relation unwanted pregnancy in Uganda from national representative sample. Methods Data of this study were obtained from Uganda demographic health survey (UDHS) 2016. The survey was cross-sectional in design and sample was collected in the second half of 2016. The study included 18,506 women between the ages of 15 and 49 who had at least one history of pregnancy priority to the survey. After controlling for other variables, the planning status of the most recent pregnancy was the primary outcome variable, and the unmet need for contraception was the main independent factor. The data was analysed using descriptive analysis, cross-tabulation, chi-square testing, and logistic regression. Version 17 of STATA was used for data analysis. At p < 0.05 was considered a statistical significance association. Results More than two-fifths of women reported an unintended pregnancy (44.5%), and around 21.09% had an unmet need for contraception. In the adjusted model, the odds ratio of unintended pregnancy among women with unmet contraceptive need was 3.97 times (95% CI = 3.61–4.37) higher than for among women who reported met need contraceptive. Age of women, place of residence, household wealth status, contraceptive usage decision, educational attainment participant, husband occupation and husband educational level were factors statistically significant association with unintended pregnancy. Conclusion According to this study, the rate of unintended pregnancy and unmet contraceptive need were both higher than the estimated global average. It is still at alarming levels, requiring various policy attention. This shows that initiatives addressing unmet needs contraceptive could be reduce unintended pregnancy. More extensive qualitative research on the key sociocultural and behavioural factors for unwanted pregnancy might be required to develop context-specific solutions.