Although misoprostol is routinely used for a range of off-label obstetric/gynecologic indications, evidence-based, up-to-date information about safety, effectiveness, and appropriate regimens is not widely available. This information is requested by providers, including pharmacists. Women need information and guidance about its use.
Despite more than a decade of concerted international and country-level efforts to ensure that women have access to emergency contraception, accessibility remains limited.
Several options for emergency contraception are available in the United States. This article describes each method, including efficacy, mode of action, safety, side effect profile and availability. The most effective emergency contraceptive is the copper IUD, followed by ulipristal acetate and levonorgestrel pills. Levonorgestrel is available for sale without restrictions, while ulipristal acetate is available with prescription only, and the copper IUD must be inserted by a clinician. Although EC pills have not been shown to reduce pregnancy or abortion rates at the population level, they are an important option for individual women seeking to prevent pregnancy after sex.
Emergency contraception has been called "the best-kept secret" in reproductive health because, despite its unique potential for helping women prevent pregnancies and fulfill their reproductive intentions, rates of use and of counseling about the method are quite low. 1 Since the introduction of dedicated emergency contraceptive pills in the mid-1990s, there has been relatively little research into the success of their introduction and uptake in developing countries. This lack of analysis on the use of emergency contraception has meant that little guidance is available about concrete strategies to expand access to the method. Because most existing studies are limited in their generalizability, we addressed gaps in knowledge by analyzing nationally representative data on emergency contraception from 45 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and West Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean. We investigate the proportion of women who have heard of emergency contraception and the proportion of sexually experienced women who have used it, and examine individual-, household-and community-level characteristics associated with having heard of or used the method. We hypothesize that more highly educated, wealthier, younger and urban women may have higher odds of having heard of and having used emergency contraception than other women.
METHODS
Data and SampleData used in this analysis come from Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), population-level household surveys that provide high-quality data for a wide range of
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.