Self-care is an effective approach that empowers individuals to take charge of their own health, access information, and utilize health services. Self-care interventions gives agency, autonomy, and choice to individuals to decide if, when, and how frequent to have children which determines significantly to the reproductive health outcomes and the achievement of universal health coverage. Subcutaneous depot medroxyprogesterone acetate contraceptive (DMPA-SC) is the only injectable contraception that fits into the self-care framework. Hence, MSION included DMPA-sc in its demand creation drive, trained providers on quality counseling, choice, product, client training on self-injection, continuum of care through her contact centre, and tracked continuation of use. The intervention was implemented in 130 public health facilities in Abia (19), Ebonyi (5), Enugu (50), and Imo (56) states. Our study compared the trend of self-injection of DMPA-sc with provider administered option.
METHODS: Service statistics for April to September 2022 was extracted from Marie Stopes database.
RESULTS: 3581 clients received DMPA-SC, of which 23% (816) were self-administered. The trends of the uptake of provider administered option exceeds that of the self-administered option.
CONCLUSION: While more users of DMPA-SC are becoming comfortable with self-injection. Most DPMPA-SC users prefer to be injected by a trained service provider. To accelerate the adoption of self inection, further study is needed to understand the demography of the users and their experience with the self-care approach.
