RESEARCH ARTICLE Open Access Knowledge, attitude and practice of emergency contraceptive among women who seek abortion care at Jimma University specialized hospital, southwest Ethiopia Tatek Tesfaye 1† , Tizta Tilahun 2* and Eshetu Girma 3† Abstract Background: In Ethiopia maternal mortality rate is very high more than one in five women die from pregnancy or pregnancy related causes. The use of contraceptives to prevent unwanted pregnancies and unsafe abortion is an important strategy to minimize maternal mortality rate. Among various forms of contraception, emergency contraceptives are the only one that can be used after sexual intercourse offering chance to prevent unwanted pregnancy. The aim of this study was to assess the knowledge, attitude and practice of emergency contraceptive among women who seek abortion care at Jimma University specialized hospital (JUSH). Methods: Institution base cross-sectional study on knowledge, attitude and practice of emergency contraceptive was conducted at JUSH from April to June, 2011Data was collected using structured questionnaire and analyzed using SPSS version 17.0. Results: In this study 89 women were interviewed. More than half of them (48) were from urban area and 41 were from rural area.46 (51.7%) of them were single. Of all the respondents only nine women had awareness about emergency contraceptive. Seven of the women mentioned pills as emergency contraception and only two of them mentioned both pills and injectable as emergency contraception. All of them have positive attitude towards emergency contraception but none of them have ever used emergency contraceptives. Conclusion and recommendation: The finding revealed pregnancy among women of 15-19 years was very common. The knowledge and practice of emergency contraception is very low. But there is high positive attitude towards emergency contraceptives. Since there is much deficit on knowledge of women on emergency contraceptives, in addition to making them accessible; programs targeted at promotion and education of emergency contraceptives is helpful to prevent unwanted pregnancy. Background History of emergency contraceptive dates back to the 1960’s when physicians in the Netherlands administered estrogen extracts to 13 years old girl who had been raped in mid cycle [1]. Emergency contraceptive can prevent pregnancy when taken shortly after unprotected sex. Currently there are four food and drug administration of America approved products on market. Three of these products are approved for prevention of pregnancy when taken within 72 hrs after unprotected sex. Adults may pur- chase all of these methods without prescription and indivi- duals who are at least 17 years old may purchase one of these methods Plan B (one step- without a prescription). The fourth product, Ella can be taken up to 5 days after unprotected sex; it is available by prescription [2]. Levenorgestrel only pill and combined oral contracep- tives are the most common emergency contraceptives available in Ethiopia [3]. It has been known since the mid 1970’s that high doses of oral contraceptives given post- coital are effective in preventing pregnancy. The uzepe * Correspondence: tiztatilahun@yahoo.com † Contributed equally 2 Department of Population and Family Health, Jimma University, P.O. Box 5093, Jimma, Ethiopia Full list of author information is available at the end of the article Tesfaye et al. BMC Women’s Health 2012, 12:3 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6874/12/3 © 2012 Tesfaye et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.