Integrating HIV and Family Planning Services: The Pros and Cons

The integration of HIV and family planning services as a one-stop service is a cost-effective way of service delivery, but it has advantages and disadvantages.

A cross-sectional study design was applied to conduct this research in Ethiopia from June 2015 to November 2018. Two-stage sampling was applied: 1) a simple random sampling method was used to select 31 public health centers, and 2) 403 clients and 305 service providers were selected by using a stratified simple random sampling. A self-administrator questionnaire was developed to collect the data from service providers, and an interview questionnaire was used to collect data from clients. The data were statistically computed using bi-variate and multivariate logistic regression.

Integrated HIV and family planning services allow for the enhancement of the competencies of healthcare workers, client satisfaction, mobilization of fiscal resources, provision of infrastructures, and adequate numbers of human resources available. It can also mobilize additional resources for health education and improve awareness on HIV and family planning services. Despite the mentioned advantages, shortages of human resources, HIV drugs and contraceptives, funding and long waiting times were identified as the disadvantages of HIV and family planning service integration. There was a risk of nine times lower chance of intention to use an integrated HIV and family planning services, if a client waited for more than 1 hour and 6 times risk waited for 30-60 minutes.

The advantages of offering an integrated service at a one-stop facility by far outweighing the disadvantages. It might be relevant to develop a strategic action plan for stakeholders to facilitate the integration of HIV and family planning services with the aim to improve service utilization and to reduce maternal and child morbidity and mortality.