Linos: Let me say—let me respond to this question this way: Now women that come [to the clinic] for contraceptive method—being it the natural, the loop [IUD], we name it—you find out the challenges. There are women who just come because they just want to enjoy themselves sexually. There’s nothing to do with … like they don’t want to plan for any family, but they want to plan so that they don’t get pregnant. But now also the housewives come for these contraceptive methods. So the challenge is, within the family, there are conflicts that people should face. We agree to say, if we are to talk of family planning, it’s a family matter. They should sit down and agree in terms of how many children, how best they can space their children. So that at the end of the day, they help them to decide “Which contraceptive method are we going to take so that we don’t have unwanted pregnancy?”
So looking at the type of the women that we are talking about, for those that they want to enjoy themselves, you find out they don’t have much issues, but if they will, then they come [to the clinic] when something unfortunate—maybe they’re using condoms, or they’re using a loop—any other side effects that they may come across, they are most likely to be honest, because it’s their own business. But for those that are married and the unfortunate, if a wife decides on her own just to come and say, “Now, I want to be, like, on this method of con–being it a loop or whatever, without maybe telling a partner—a lot of it causes family disputes. And that disadvantages a very good service, especially in terms of care and utilization.
And those families—definitely they affect individuals’ mental health, in the ways of if somebody experienced some side effects and you imagine it, does not tell her husband, there will be a lot of problems like domestic violence, extramarital affairs. If you may imagine if women is a continuously bleeding [because she is using contraception discreetly without her husband knowing] and possibly the husband might need, if you know some sexual activities on a daily basis and a woman is bleeding on a daily basis—let’s take that scenario that causes a lot of infidelity within families. And as a result now, in terms of service, instead of the service now that has been provided, which is very good, it has to be, no, it becomes a problem.
So let’s take now those that are married under the age of 18 years, adolescents in fact. You see they need multiple services, which most of them, they are not receiving. They need social support; they need to go back to school. There are a lot of issues. They need to take care of their children. It definitely, they need to prevent themselves from unwanted pregnancy. And having that big pile of problems, definitely that will then affect them mentally. And they need care more than anyone else, particularly to make sure that they’re emotionally sound, they’re psychologically sound, so that they are able then to fulfill, to achieve their full potential.