Unmet Need for Family Planning Among Women Attending Primary Healthcare in Alahsa, Saudi Arabia

Backgrounds: Enhancing maternal health quality is a concern among researchers globally. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), one factor in women's health and empowerment is the rate of use of various contraceptive techniques. The WHO defines unmet contraceptive need as the discrepancy between a woman's desire to delay or cease childbearing and lack of contraception use to achieve this goal. Our study was designed to measure the unmet need for family planning and contraceptive use among married Saudi women attending primary healthcare centers in Alahsa, Saudi Arabia. Methodology: A cross-sectional study was carried out using multistage cluster stratified sampling. The study included all married Saudi women aged 18-49 attending primary health centers. A structured questionnaire from the United States Agency for International Development Demographic and Health Surveys Methodology was used. Data analysis was performed using the statistical software IBM SPSS version 29 (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY). Results: In all, 430 individuals were included. The participants' ages ranged from 19 to 49 years (33.4 +/- 7 years). Among them, 50 (11.6%) were pregnant. Among those who were not pregnant, 268 (62.3%) were using a method of contraception. Based on the definitions adopted in this study, 90 (20.9%) had unmet needs for family planning, and 340 (79.1%) had their needs met. The total demand for family planning was estimated to be 83.2%. The percentage of demand for family planning satisfied by a modern contraceptive method was 46.9%. Conclusion: Although Alahsa has a lower unmet need rate (20%) than other cities in Saudi Arabia, it remains notably higher than the average rate in Northern African and Western Asian countries, which is 10.9%. A number of factors, including nulliparity and having more than two children, were associated with unmet contraceptive needs. The majority of women who did not use contraceptives had concerns about the side effects and inconvenience of use.