Knowledge and practice of contraception uses among Dom community in Siraha district.

Thesis Report.

ABSTRACT: The aim of this study is to explore the uses of contraception in the Dom community, which is a socially excluded cast group in Terai of Nepal. For this purpose, constituency no.-3 of Siraha district has been selected. This is a cross-sectional, descriptive study. Mainly primary data are used through focusing their quantitative in nature. Family Planning program has been the main focus of government policies. The National Family Planning program is to extend, sustain and adequate even though there are a lot of problems in promoting the contraceptive measures. The contraception prevalence rate is 43% which has remained constant for the last two years. The district level contraception prevalence rate has been 58% even though there is a lack of proper effectiveness in the general people about contraception methods. The government has set a goal to achieve the contraception prevalence rate of about 67% which has been a big challenge. The level of knowledge about Family planning is more than 90% even though the attitude and practice differ with respect to casts and ethnicity. The Dom community is considered as a traditionally occupational cast. They are involved in making a variety of baskets and other containers from bamboos. They sell these to make their earnings for food and day to day survival. This community has been actively involved in rearing pigs. Each family owns many pigs. They sell these and make their living. The Dom is a component of Hindu casts system. They are poor and exploited by higher castes. Most of them are landless and uneducated (illiterate). Due to illiteracy they get married early that provides a lot of impacts on health i.e. early pregnancy risk that leads to more complications or ultimate maternal death. So they need to focus more in the use of contraception to avoid the early or unwanted pregnancy and hence safeguard the newlyweds from many complications. Due to modernization the Dom community may also have started to change their lifestyle and begin quitting their traditional occupation of pig farming and basket making. As they have started to migrate from one place to another place in search of new jobs, most of them work in many big cities of India and other foreign countries as laborers. There has been no formal research conducted on the Dom Community till date. And, the Dom community till date does not have any research about Family Planning method work on the family health has not been thought of by any researchers. This research generalizes the Dom community at the national level through a small but significant research done in a single constituency of a district. So, it is expected that this research will have its effect on further studies done on similar yet broader aspects of other similar communities in the country.