Abstract

*Alex T. Okri, Bimbo H. Akintola and Sade V. Tosin

In the past, family-planning programs have focused attention primarily on women, because of the need to free women from excessive child-bearing, and to reduce maternal and infant mortality through the use of modern methods of contraception. Most of the family-planning services were offered within maternal and child health (MCH) centers, most research and information campaigns focused on women and this has reinforced the misconception that family planning is largely a woman’s business, with the man playing a very peripheral role especially in a society where male supremacy and virility is very important and is marked by Procreation. Hence, this is a descriptive study designed to assess the knowledge and attitude of men towards vasectomy as a method of family planning in okada community, Edo state. Accidental sampling technique was used to select 140 married men and questionnaire was administered. However only 136 of the questionnaire was retrieved and same analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics with level of significance set at 5% (0.05). The study revealed that majority of the respondents was between the ages of 28 – 37 years and have at least one sexual partner. Despite the respondents’ knowledge of at least one form of male family planning methods, majority 85 (62.5%) had no knowledge of vasectomy while out of the 51 (37.5%) who claimed to have knowledge, only 18 (13.2%) had high knowledge the remaining 33(24.3%) had poor few knowledge of vasectomy. Most of the respondents also showed negative attitude towards vasectomy and believed that vasectomy should not be done by men and that females should be responsible for family planning but the decision on the method to use should be demanded from them as the head of the family. Cultural acceptance112 (82.4%), religious acceptance98 (72.1%), ignorance 96 (70.6%) and accessibility of family planning clinic 90 (66.2%) were the major factors influencing attitude of men towards vasectomy. The study also revealed that there was no significant association between academic attainment of respondents under study and their attitude towards vasectomy [X2=3.534, P-value = 0.171], as well as between marital status between and their attitude towards vasectomy [X2 =0.436 P-value =0.804], with p > 0.05; however, significant association was found between the level of knowledge of respondents under study and their attitude towards vasectomy [X2 = 4.918 P-value = 0.047] with p < 0.05. It was recommended that there is need to design effective information, education and communication strategies to reach men in every part of the federation on the need to actively participate in family planning, as well as intense value clarification and attitude transformation in order to improve men's attitudes towards vasectomy.