Some local health facilities are on the sport after some mothers claimed that they were forced to take birth controls immediately after delivery.

While no law has so far been enacted to make use of family planning mandatory, Rwanda Today has learnt that in several rural hospitals, some mothers were given contraceptives after giving birth without their consent.

The contraceptive, they said, are administered by midwives as soon as the mother has given birth.

Rwanda Biomedical Center (RBC) did not respond to requests for information by press time.

But the mothers who spoke to Rwanda Today on condition of anonymity say they have developed complications which they suspect are side effects including excessive bleeding due to use of the injectable contraceptives which are a form of hormonal birth control for women.

“I went there in a health facility in Huye district on April 10 2017, they forced me to use contraception for five years and I don’t know how it works…” said a mother whose identity we have concealed to allow her to speak freely.

She also complained that the contraception is causing heavy bleeding over the years with a high cost of sanitary pads.

While the Ministry of Health maintains that family planning is voluntary, health workers, specifically midwives, are motivated to force mothers to use family planning.

A nurse who spoke to Rwanda Today on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter mentioned that when one achieves a target of enrolling mothers for family planning they get rewarded.

As a result, some midwives have now resorted to forcing in particular single mothers to use family planning.

According to the 2019- 2020 Demographic Health Survey (DHS) by the National Institute of Statistics, if fertility were to remain constant at current levels, a woman in Rwanda would bear an average of 4.1 children in her lifetime, which is a significant drop from from 6.1 children per woman in 2005 to 4.2 children per woman in 2014-2015 where it has remained relatively constant in 2019-20.

Fertility is higher among rural women than among urban women; on average, rural women will give birth to 0.9 more children during their reproductive years than urban women (4.3 and 3.4, respectively). The 2019-2020 DHS also shows overall, 64 percent of currently married women use a method of family planning, with 58 percent using a modern method and 6 percent using a traditional method.

It also shows that women in rural areas are likely to use a contraceptive than women in urban areas at 65 percent and 61 percent respectively.

Use of contraception is highest among married women in the North province (69 percent) and the East province (66 percent) and lowest among those in Kigali (61 percent).