NEWS & UPDATES


a pregnancy but have no access to contraception. This unmet need for family planning contributes to one-third of maternal deaths and leads to 47,000 deaths from unsafe abortions every year, with the majority of these deaths occurring in developing countries. These are preventable deaths, so what can be done and what are the barriers to addressing this? Family planning is a low-tech yet high-impact area of health care. With access to quality services, in particular to highly effective long-acting reversible contraception (LARC), women can choose if, when and how many children to have. Quality family planning services not only improve the health of the woman, but also prevent maternal deaths from unsafe abortion. Yet many healthcare providers around the world are not trained in family planning or safe abortion services, and those who are often feel unacknowledged and unsupported.


The RCOG Leading Safe Choices


Leading Safe Choices G


Improving quality of care and changing mindsets in postpartum family planning and safe abortion care.


lobally, 225 million women would like to delay or prevent


initiative is a three-year donor-funded programme, with pilot sites placed in South Africa and Tanzania. The programme, led by Professor Alison Finader FRCOG will focus on postpartum family planning and safe abortion care, increasing skills and improving quality of care. We aim to support and mentor professionals and increase recognition of their efforts. In doing so, we hope to raise the professional standing of those working in women’s health. We will be working within the Department of Health systems in- country, where we will also be monitoring and evaluating our impact, gathering lessons learned and analysing our results for generalisability. Leading Safe Choices has already


produced best practice papers in postpartum family planning and safe abortion care, and developed training programmes that are modelled on those best practices. The best practice papers were developed in close collaboration with a range of Fellows and Members and other international experts. They are concise, peer-reviewed, easy-to-use tools that summarise existing evidence set out by the RCOG, the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare and the World Health Organization.


Judiac Ranape, Clinical Nurse Practitioner, Western Cape, South Africa


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Supporting and acknowledging healthcare professionals working in women’s health Professionals like Judiac Ranape, a nurse in South Africa, have been working within women’s health care for several years. Judiac is dedicated to assisting women who need family planning and abortion services, but says that more trained professionals are needed to provide these essential and often life-saving services. Furthermore, these professionals need to feel supported and recognised in the difficult environments in which they work. Midwives like Sumaya Joseph, who also works in South Africa, believe that many of


Sumaya Joseph, Midwife, Western Cape, South Africa


the problems women face are due to lack of access to services at the right time, in particular to long-term postpartum family planning. Women are typically offered pills or injections, but then struggle to return every month or three months, as required for these short-term methods. By training midwives and nurses like


Judiac and Sumaya, we hope to see a demonstrable effect on quality of care, on acknowledgement of the need and on the incredible work that is already being undertaken by these and other healthcare workers around the world.


Further information • For more information on this exciting initiative, visit www.rcog. org.uk/leadingsafechoices or contact leadingsafechoices@rcog.org.uk


• The Best Practice Papers can be found at www.rcog.org.uk/bestpracticepapers


O&G November 2015


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