SEXUAL HEALTH
Emergency
had unprotected sex in the last 12 months1
pregnancies end in abortion, and 45% of pregnancies in the UK are unplanned2
.
• A previous study from Edinburgh has suggested that only 11% of women presenting for medical termination in the UK used Emergency Contraception. This statistic is further corroborated by the FPA survey in which 83% of UK women did not use emergency contraception after unprotected sex.
• Is this because the media stigmatises women who use emergency contraception and therefore this actually contributes to the issue of unwanted pregnancy for which the same media then criticise these women?
40 - SCOTTISH PHARMACIST
Contraception: A new choice for patients? T
he need for emergency contraception is perhaps more common than we may think - 30% of women said they
Nearly half of all unintended
• 52% of 16 to 24 year old women thought asking for Emergency Contraception was embarrassing3
• 76% of women disagreed that using emergency contraception meant a woman had been irresponsible with her contraception and/or taken a risk4
In recent research, carried out for HRA Pharma by Opinion Matters, who sampled 1,000 UK mothers and 1,000 UK fathers who have children between the ages of 10- 25. 84% of respondents reported that they’d feel confident talking to their son or daughter about condoms and around 75% said they’d be happy to talk about the contraceptive pill. This corresponds to 41.2% feeling confident discussing emergency contraception, 30.3% for the contraceptive injection or 24.9% for the contraceptive implant. It shows a significant knowledge gap between ‘regular contraception’ and other forms of contraception.
When it came to discuss emergency contraception women were more likely to feel confident talking about this form than men (47% vs 35%) and women also felt more comfortable talking about alternative forms of contraception such as the coil, the implant and the injection.
However, favourably for pharmacy the survey results showed nearly 9 out of 10 people would like to see pharmacists given greater freedom to dispense more types of contraception over the counter.
CURRENT PICTURE IN SCOTLAND Recent data published in Scotland has shown that the downward trend in the number and rate of terminations reported in recent years continued in 2014. Since peaking in 2008, the number of terminations has reduced from 13,908 to 11,475 in 2014. The decline since 2008 represents a 17.5% reduction in the number of terminations. This decline neatly coincides with the introduction of the
Public Health Sexual Health Service which increased access to emergency contraception for women in Scotland. The termination rate fall has also been matched by a fall of 8.1% in the live birth rate.
What more can we do to improve the Pharmacy Sexual Health Service in Scotland?
Emergency Contraception – New Treatments
ellaOne® has now received a pan- European approval for a switch from a POM to P. This removes the need for ellaOne to be supplied using a prescription or Patient Group Direction by pharmacists. The efficacy of ellaOne has been shown to be significantly greater than Levonorgestrel in the two main relevant time periods 0-24 hours and 0-72 hours. It also offers further additional benefit as ellaOne is also licensed to treat women up to 120 hours for emergency contraception.
Based on numbers needed to treat
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