VIAC_Contraception_KAP_Baseline_Comprehensive_Report

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• Create Date August 12, 2026
• Last Updated August 12, 2026

This report presents an in-depth analytical review of #VIAC's baseline Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices (KAP) survey on contraception and safe choices, conducted across eleven rural communities in the Buea, Limbe, and Tiko health districts of the South West Region of Cameroon. A total of 2,018 adolescents and young people (63.3% female, 36.7% male; mean age 28.7 years) were surveyed between March and May 2024, prior to any VIAC programmatic intervention. The purpose of this review is to translate the survey's descriptive statistics into clear programmatic implications, to identify the specific areas where VIAC intervention is most urgently needed, and to characterise the real-world impact of the knowledge, attitude, and practice gaps the data reveals.

The baseline paints a consistent and concerning picture: basic knowledge of what a contraceptive is exists (80.6% gave a correct definition), but this knowledge collapses rapidly as questions become more specific, only 51.1% could correctly identify the condom as the method protecting against both pregnancy and STIs, and a majority (54.3%) could not define safe abortion or name a single source of safe-abortion information. Attitudes are similarly split: fewer than half (41.3%) feel comfortable even discussing contraceptives, two-thirds (67.3%) believe abortion is morally wrong in all circumstances, and an overwhelming 84.5% describe abortion as taboo and stigmatised in their community.

In practice, 60.9% report having used contraception, but only 20.1% use it consistently, and most alarmingly, when asked what methods are actually used in the community to terminate pregnancies, the two most common concrete answers were whiskey/strong drinks (16.7%) and traditional herb mixtures (9.3%), with salt-and-water solutions, Postinor misuse, and even physical trauma also reported. These findings, taken together, describe a population with a thin layer of surface knowledge sitting over deep, unresolved gaps in accurate information, comfort, and safe practice precisely the conditions under which  unsafe abortion and unintended pregnancy thrive.

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