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| photo by Sara Gomez |
Last week, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists urged wider availability of misoprostol for postabortion care services, especially in developing countries where maternal mortality due to incomplete abortion and miscarriage is high.
"Women in low-resource settings and in areas with restrictive abortion laws suffer disproportionately from abortion complications," said Dr. Laura Castleman, Ipas medical director and a member of ACOG's Committee on International Affairs which developped the new document. "Misoprostol effectively treats incomplete abortion or miscarriage, as well as other complications of pregnancy, including postpartum hemorrhage. It can help save women's lives."
Postabortion care services traditionally use extensive hospital resources and high-level personnel. Misoprostol is inexpensive, doesn’t require refrigeration, and can be safely administered in an outpatient setting by trained providers.It is a complementary method to manual vacuum aspiration, which can also be provided in primary care settings for postabortion care. Misoprostol provides women with a safe medical option, said Castleman.
“Too many women die every year from abortion complications, and these deaths are largely preventable.Misoprostol is an important tool in our efforts to increase access to safe postabortion care services for women around the world, and it is also a critical means of expanding access to safe abortion services,” said Traci Baird, director of Ipas’s Medical Abortion Initiative. “It is a priority for Ipas to help our partners in low-resource settings realize the potential of misoprostol,” she added.
The full ACOG committee opinion is published in this month’s Obstetrics and Gynecology.
For more information, contact media@ipas.org