Ipas joins global health leaders at International Conference on Family Planning

This week, Ipas joins thousands of participants from around the world at the International Conference on Family Planning in Dakar. It is the largest gathering of its kind, bringing together more than 2,000 participants to discuss the challenges and latest advances in the effort to guarantee universal access to family planning.

Around the world, approximately 215 million women would like to space their pregnancies, but do not have access to modern contraception. The fact that 21 million women resort each year to dangerous, unsafe abortions is a clear indication that women need more control over their fertility — including better access to contraception and safe abortion care when contraceptives are not used or fail.

Ipas staff and partners will lead or participate in nearly a dozen panels at the conference that address strategies to integrate family planning into postabortion care, and to ensure that safe abortion care is an integral part of family planning programs. Too often, family planning services are divorced from postabortion care, although studies show that women who receive family planning counseling as part of abortion care are likely to leave a facility with a contraceptive method in hand.

Ipas has always emphasized contraceptive counseling as part of abortion care so that women can avoid repeat unwanted pregnancies. In Ethiopia, in addition to training health-care providers in abortion-related care that includes contraception, Ipas and partners also train and equip providers to ensure the effective integration of comprehensive contraception at the public and private health facilities.

Increasingly, Ipas is also working with family planning providers so that they are able to support women facing unwanted pregnancies. In Nepal, Ipas is working with the Nepal Beautician Association to display and distribute information on abortion methods and family planning in beauty parlors around the country. With Ipas support, the Ministry of Health has trained more than 5,000 female community health volunteers to provide women with accurate information and referrals for contraception and safe abortion services.

When a woman experiences an unintended pregnancy, it is an indication that society and the health-care system have failed her. At the International Conference on Family Planning, Ipas will join an international discussion with global health leaders to ensure that family planning programs both help women prevent and manage unwanted pregnancy. Even the best contraceptive and postabortion services are not enough to prevent women from suffering and dying from unsafe abortion; a more comprehensive approach is needed.

Source: http://ipas.org