Ipas launches new resource for reproductive health-care providers and advocates around the world

The IDEAS database will enable people around the world to access statistics on reproductive health.

Photo taken by Marcus Rose, Panos Pictures.

How do you calculate the costs of unsafe abortion? Quantify the suffering it causes women, their families and their communities? Calculate the value of high-quality reproductive health-care services? With difficulty. But such data are critical for understanding the magnitude of these issues, measuring the impact of improvements made, identifying best practices and planning for the future. And that is why Ipas has developed the International Data for Evaluation of Abortion Services, or IDEAS, website.

IDEAS is a database of abortion and related reproductive-health information which is designed to serve as a resource for reproductive health-care providers and advocates worldwide. Users of the broad range of information on the website may learn, for example, that the Global Health Council estimates that 25 percent of maternal deaths in Romania are attributed to unsafe abortion. Or that only 92 of the 292 facilities designated to perform abortions in South Africa are currently functioning, according to the Department of Health.

Tamara Fetters, Ipas research and evaluation senior associate, notes that “Ipas is uniquely placed to collect this information through our global network of staff, our partners in the reproductive-health community, and our knowledge of all issues related to abortion in the countries where we work.”

Developing a standardized abortion database has not been easy; the availability of abortion and other health statistics varies widely from country to country. For many countries, there are no accurate abortion data: how often it is performed, by whom, under what circumstances, and the resulting morbidity and/or mortality.

At the present time, the IDEAS database contains information for 17 countries. This information includes:

• General country statistics
• Abortion laws and policies
• Reproductive-health data
• Data on abortion(to the extent that it exists)
• Data on the training of health practitioners and equipping of health-care facilities to provide safe abortion care
• Links to information sources
• A bibliography of resources

“The IDEAS website, accessible by the general public and intended to serve as an international resource, reflects Ipas’s high standards for accuracy of information and only includes data collected with rigorous methodology from validated sources,” said Fetters.

IDEAS data have been collected from a variety of sources, including Ministries of Health, professional organizations, local and international bodies, such the World Health Organization, and recent publications on abortion, emergency contraception and other related issues. Complete source information is provided on the website for all IDEAS data, enabling those who use the database to refer easily to the original source. Certain variables are still being identified, collected and validated. Users are welcome to submit their comments via the link on the IDEAS homepage or by writing to IDEAShelpbox@ipas.org.

Visit the IDEAS website at http://ideas.ipas.org.

For more information, contact:
Kirsten Sherk
Senior Associate, Media Relations
e-mail: sherkk@ipas.org
phone: 919.960.5612
fax: 919.929.0258