Abstract:
Despite high sexual activity among adolescent girls in Kenya, contraceptive uptake is
very low with only about 26 percent sexually active adolescent girls currently using a
contraceptive method. This exposes them to HIV infections and unplanned preg-
nancies which consequently lead to school dropouts, unsafe abortions, and lack of
employment opportunities. This cross-sectional study aimed at assessing the utiliza-
tion of contraceptives among secondary school adolescent girls in Karuri Town
Council, Kiambu County. Overall, 421 girls aged between 13.0 to 19.0 years took part
in the study. Findings showed that despite majority (77.5%) of the adolescent girls
having had sexual debut by the age of 15 years, contraceptive utilization was very low
at 43%. The results revealed that age of the adolescent, knowledge of contraceptives
options, perception and accessibility of the contraceptives had positive significant ef-
fect on contraceptive utilization. Adolescents aged 18 years and above were more
likely to utilize contraceptives as compared to those of a lesser age (p ≤ 0.001; OR:
9.870 (95% CI: 3.781 - 25.763)). Those with knowledge on contraceptives were OR
3.2 times more likely to use contraceptives (p = 0.025), similarly, accessibility was
significantly associated with increased contraceptive utilization (p = 0.34, 95% CI:
1.054 - 4.187). Adolescents who perceived use of contraceptives as wise were more
likely to use a contraceptive than those of a divergent opinion (OR: 2.053 (95% CI:
1.024 - 4.115), p = 0.041). This revealed that high level of knowledge on contracep-
tives did not always amount to practice. There is therefore a need to develop age
specific reproductive health messages to guide school education curriculum as well as
parent or guardian-child communication.
