Awareness and Attitude of Women Towards their Spouse's use of Vasectomy as a Fertility Control Method in Jos, North-Central Nigeria

Background: Vasectomy, though a safe, simple outpatient surgical procedure for male sterilization, it is the least used in developing countries of the world. This study was set to determine the awareness and attitude of women towards their spouse's use of vasectomy for fertility control. Method: This was a cross-sectional study involving 400 women who attended antenatal clinic at the Jos University Teaching Hospital (JUTH), Jos, Nigeria from September 2007 to march 2008. Results: Among the 400 respondents only 98(24.5%) were aware of vasectomy. The commonest source of information was from health workers in the hospital (47.96%).Most of the women 359(89.75%) approved of male contraception with only 41(10.25%) disapproving.However, 81.25 % disapproved with the use of vasectomy by their spouses. Most of those who disapproved of vasectomy gave their reasons as fear of sexual dysfunction (43.10%), religious prohibition (24.62%), cultural prohibition (19.05%), future regrets (9.85%) and fear of marital infidelity by their spouse (3.38%).More Christians (80.74%) approved for spouse to use vasectomy than Muslims (17.30%).The educated women (82.96%) were more willing to allow their spouse use vasectomy than the uneducated (33.33%). Conclusion: The awareness of vasectomy was low. Although most women approved of male contraception for fertility control, they would not allow their spouse to use vasectomy. More targeted efforts by promoting women education, economic empowerment, family planning enlightenment programmes as well as the involvement of traditional and religious leaders should be made to improve awareness and acceptability of vasectomy by both men and women in developing countries