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The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
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The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
Charlotte E. Hord, BA, Director, Policy, Ipas, 300 Market Street, Suite 200, Chapel Hill, NC 27516 and Merrill Wolf, MA, Public Affairs and Media, Ipas, 300 Market Street, Suite 200, Chapel Hill, NC 27516, 919 960 5612, chord@ipas.org.
The international community increasingly recognizes unsafe abortion as a serious public health problem. At the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, governments agreed that postabortion care should be available to all women needing it, and that where legal, abortion should be safe. In 1999 at the five-year review of ICPD implementation, governments called for health systems to make services accessible to women (“… in circumstances where abortion is not against the law, health systems should train and equip health-service providers and should take other measures to ensure that such abortion is safe and accessible…” ICPD+5, Paragraph 63iii).
The international community thus created a mandate for governments, health care providers and NGOs to expand access to safe, high-quality abortion care, which includes elective abortion; treatment for complications of unsafe abortion (“postabortion” care); and postabortion family planning and other reproductive health services. Abortion is legally permitted for some circumstances in almost all countries.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has taken a critical step forward to ensure that this mandate can be implemented by developing technical and policy guidance for health systems in how to make safe abortion services accessible. The guidance document, which reviews the various methods of abortion and addresses issues around service delivery; clinical care; and ethics, law, and policy, is expected to be issued by WHO in 2002. This presentation will review some of its key messages and suggest ways health systems can begin incorporating the guidance into their policies and service delivery.
Learning Objectives:
Keywords: Abortion, Reproductive Health
Related Web page: World Health Organization: www.who.int/reproductive-health/index.htm
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: World Health Organization
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.