Background: Emergency contraception offers women a last chance to prevent pregnancy after unprotected intercourse, so it reduce prevalence of unwanted pregnancies, unsafe abortions and their consequences on women's reproductive health. Objectives: to assess awareness and use of EC and identify factors affecting them.
Method: A cross-sectional study was conducted in Kidwany MCH Centre, Assiut City from May-October, 2018 on 400 married women of reproductive age . Data collection was done by one of the researchers through personal interview using semi structured questionnaire that included sociodemographic and family characteristics data, gynecological and obstetrics history, EC awareness and use.
Results: mean participants' age was 32.72±7.01years, urban residents represented 81.75%, 49% had secondary education/ technical institute, 73.0% were housewives. Only 27.75% had ever heard about EC. Moreover, only 38.7% of them have good knowledge about it. Medical personnel were the main source of knowledge. Only 6% had ever used EC, the majority of them used ECPs once at the proper time. Awareness and previous use of EC were significantly better with higher education, working women, non-consanguineous couple, had more than two years duration since her last delivery, had no desire to get more children and among women who had history of unwanted or unplanned pregnancy.
Conclusion: the majority of married women in reproductive age have lack of awareness and proper knowledge about EC methods and very low use of them. Health education campaigns should be initiated and maintained for raising awareness about EC.