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The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
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The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
Ubaidur Rob, Ph D, Population Council, House # CES (B) 21, Road # 118, Gulshan, Dhaka, 1212, Bangladesh, 880 2 882-3334, urob@pcdhaka.org and Nancy J. Piet-Pelon, MA, Independent Consultant, 3546 South Utah Street, Arlington, VA 2206-1721.
The national family planning program in Bangladesh is a success story. Despite the lack of improvements in socio-economic conditions, the program has managed to motivate eligible couples from rural to sprawling urban slums to be acceptors of family planning. During the past two decades family planning program has consistently out performed expectations. Relying on a vast network of field workers who provide services both at the fixed locations and doorstep, the program reached to almost every eligible woman of the country. As a result, the contraceptive prevalence rate increased from 8 percent to 54 percent during the last twenty-five years. Consequently, the total fertility rate declined to 3.4 children in 2000. This article describes the cases where family planning services failed reach the prospective clients. In-depth interviews were conducted with 53 women who had been admitted to hospitals with complications of induced pregnancy termination. Findings suggest that in most cases husbands have supported decisions regarding both contraception and pregnancy termination. Understanding their experiences is essential for service providers as most of these women never consulted professional health care providers and family planning service providers have an overwhelming responsibility to give optimal advice and care to these women. Furthermore, conclusions from the case interviews are that most of these pregnancy terminations and their tragic aftermath were preventable. Consequently, women deserved much better advice and care, particularly those women who believed that their age or lactational amenorrhoea would prevent future pregnancies.
Learning Objectives:
Keywords: Access to Health Care, Abortion
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.