Discussion Health care services in slums and the health status of their residents have become a public health challenge in the current century. The Iranian metropolis of S3I-201 mw Shiraz has a good health care network in that it provides health care access to more than 85% of its whole population.22 Nevertheless, many dwellers of the slums of this city are deprived from basic health care services.24 It is clear that the current locations of the health care centers in the slums are Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical not compatible with standard protocols.

The problem is compounded by the fact that there is no reliable information and evidence on the exact health status of the residents of these regions. In this study, we found out that Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical 21.6% of the slums were not covered by health care services; this rate is much higher than that in rural areas (less than 5%).22 Studies among slums in India25 and Africa26 have also pointed out that accessibility is a very important contributing factor in the utilization of health care services among slum dwellers.25,26 According to our study, the coverage of contraception in the rural and urban areas of Fars Province was roughly 66% and 63%, Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical respectively, while this figure in the slums stood at 51%, which is significantly lower than the rate in the rural areas (P<0.001).21 Moreover, the contraceptive

prevalence rates of all methods among married women of reproductive age (15-49) in Iran is 73%,27 as opposed to 66.4% in our study. Also in our study, 19.15% of the participants were on oral contraceptives, showing that this method was the most commonly used,

while the least common one was Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical intramuscular injection of Medroxyprogesterone Acetate (3.94%). Approximately, 28% of the women of reproductive age in our study were not using Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical any method of contraception due to a lack of accessibility to public health centers. Our findings demonstrated that 28% of the women had not registered and followed family planning programs. This could be due to difficult access to health care centers, which is compatible to other studies.25,26 According to evidence, female dwellers of slums have much higher fertility rates than their urban peers; moreover, in many regions of Asia and Africa, in the slums, fertility rates are similar to those of rural areas.9 The low coverage of family planning programs in the slums of Shiraz along with immigration from rural to urban areas has led to high first rates of population growth and consequently increased incidence rates of antisocial and risky behaviors, addiction, STDs, and other psycho-socio-medical hazards.28 In our study, over 34% of the pregnant women were deprived from maternal and postpartum health care. These statistics, when juxtaposed against the total country rates (27.5% and 15.6% for maternal and postpartum care, respectively)29are indeed disconcerting.