Treatment seeking pattern among infertile couples in a rural area

Abstract

Background: According to DLHS survey Karnataka, women who had primary and secondary infertility constitute 5.9 and 1.7 percent respectively of ever married women between 15-49 years. Main objectives of the study were to describe the socio demographic characteristics prevailing among infertile subjects of the study population and to describe the treatment seeking pattern among the infertile couples of the study population Methods: Cross- sectional descriptive study was conducted at rural field practice area of tertiary hospital, Bangalore, India. Complete enumeration of entire Primary Health center area covering 26,190 populations. In depth interview using a pretested pre-structured questionnaire was conducted enumerating all couples with infertility in the entire Primary Health Centre area and their treatment seeking behaviour. Results: Total population covered under the study is 26,190. Among them number of couples were 5210. Among 5210 couples, total number of eligible couples was 4120. Eligible couples are currently married couples where the women are in the reproductive age group between 15-49 years. Among the eligible couples only 1379 were exposed the risk of pregnancy. Couples who are exposed to risk of pregnancy include those who are cohabitating and not using any approved methods of contraception, where women is not pregnant and not in lactational amenorrhoea. Prevalence of primary infertility is 4.5%.Prevalence of secondary infertility is 3.6%.So the prevalence of infertility is 8.1%. Conclusions: Most common treatment seeking pattern was allopathy followed by traditional healers. Most common reason for not taking treatment was economic hardship among those with primary infertility and in those with secondary infertility was that they wanted to wait for spontaneous conception.