Unmet need for limiting, on the other hand, includes women who are fecund and not using family planning and who say they do not want another child. It also includes pregnant women whose current pregnancy was unwanted but who now say they do not want more children or who are undecided whether they want another child. In addition, it includes amenorrheic women whose last birth was unwanted but who now say they do not want more children or who are undecided whether they want another child.

Bicol Region has the second highest unmet need for family planning among regions in the country, second only to ARMM with 32.7 percent. In Bicol Region, unmet need for limiting is more than twice the unmet need for spacing. This means that there are more women who need family planning to limit the number of children than women who need family planning for spacing pregnancies. The NDHS results noted the increased demand for family planning in the five-year period prior to the survey. This was exacerbated by the withdrawal of USAID commodity supply resulting in the general increase in unmet need.

Rising rate of contraceptive use is supposed to reduce unmet need for family planning. In the Bicol Region, contraceptive prevalence rate decreased from 47.4 percent in 2003 to 39.4 percent in 2008. With only close to four in every 10 married women using family planning in the Bicol Region, it is not surprising that unmet need is high. Of the 39.4 percent of married women practicing family planning, 24.2 percent use modern methods including pills (10.9%), female sterilization (6.5%), injectables (3.4%) and male condom (1.9%). One percent use IUD and only 0.3 percent use the modern natural family planning methods. The remaining 15.3 percent use traditional methods including withdrawal (7.5 percent), rhythm (6.3 percent) and folk method (1.4 percent). The use of traditional family planning methods decreased by 8.5 percentage points between 2003 and 2008. The use of withdrawal method dropped from 15.1 percent to 7.5 percent and rhythm method from 7.8 percent to 6.3 percent. Use of other/folk methods however increased from 0.9 percent to 1.4 percent during the same period.

Increased unmet need for family planning necessitates greater efforts to understand and address its causes. This is particularly urgent in Bicol Region, which has the second highest total fertility rate among regions at 4.1 percent. The data on unmet needs can help policy makers and program managers strengthen family planning programs by considering the characteristics of women who have unmet needs and get rid of the hindrances that prevent them from choosing a family planning method.

Source of basic data: 2008 National Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS)
                                         National Statistics Office (NSO)

Date posted: March 19, 2010