Purpose The purpose of this paper is to understand women’s experiences, acceptability and outcomes of using the medical termination of pregnancy (MTP). The study is conducted at nine reproductive health and family planning clinics at university hospitals as well as regional and provincial hospitals located in Bangkok and the locations within Thailand. Design/methodology/approach This is a descriptive research recruiting healthy women with pregnancy up to 63 days since the last menstrual period (LMP) who opted for MTP during 2012–2014. Findings A total of 443 women who were referred from the reproductive health networks voluntarily participated in the study. Overall, 92.6 percent of participants had a complete abortion. No serious adverse events were found for cases using misoprostol at home or at clinic. More than 98.3 percent of the women felt satisfied or very satisfied with the method. More than 80 percent of participants thought that the side-effects of the method were as expected or less than expected. More than 95 percent of the women recommended having MTP available in Thailand. Originality/value The introduction of MTP that uses a mifepristone and misoprostol regimen (Medabon®) in pregnancies up to 63 days, since LMP demonstrates that misoprostol can be safely used by women at home or at clinic. The administration of misoprostol at home reduces the number of hospital visits, which saves time and costs for traveling from home to the facility. In addition, women have more privacy and control over their bodies by self-administering misoprostol. The MTP’s introductory results also show that MTP service provision is well integrated into reproductive health and family planning services. It is useful for stakeholders who would be involved in design and planning of health system services before the MTP is made broadly available throughout the country.

Background: Adolescent pregnancy is an important health and social issue that affects both individual and social well-being. However, deriving a national estimate is challenging in a country with multiple incomplete national databases especially the abortion statistics. The objective of this study was to estimate the adolescent pregnancy rates in Thailand using capture-recapture method. Methods: An application of capture-recapture method was conducted using two cross-sectional databases (i.e., the national birth registration and the Ministry of Public Health standard health databases) and one hospital-based data source from medical record reviews. A 3-sources capture-recapture with log-linear model was applied to estimate adolescent pregnancy rates. Results: A total number of 741,084, 290,922 and 25,478 records were respectively identified from the birth registrations, standard health databases and hospital-based survey data during 2008 to 2013. The estimated adolescent pregnancy rates /1000 adolescent women (95% confidence intervals (CI)) ranged from 56.3 (49.4, 66.9) to 70.3 (60.3, 76.6). The estimated rates were about 12-31% higher than adolescent birth rates reported by the Thailand Public Health Statistics. Conclusions: With the capture-recapture method, more accurate adolescent pregnancy rates were estimated. This method should be able to apply to any setting with similar context.

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to assess the situation of accessibility to reproductive health rights, and the conditional factors of accessibility to such rights of adolescents. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative method was used to extract information from 80 informants. Data were collected through in-depth interview, focus group discussion, observation, data recording, audio recording and the review of related documents during August to October 2016. Findings Adolescents had not accessed to their right on informing of their decision making; information and education; health; confidentiality and privacy; and treating with equity and no discrimination. Also, the conditional factors influenced to the accessibility on such rights were lacking of knowledge on reproductive health and negative attitude toward this matter among the people concerned. There were still no regulations or policies on the performance of authority agencies and the factors on social dimensions, traditions, customs, sexual culture and religion. Originality/value The findings from this study would be a help to promote the accessibility for adolescents to reproductive health rights under the Prevention and Solution of Adolescent Pregnancy Problem Act, B.E. 2559 (2016) specific on standard criteria reproductive health services from hospitals and the involvement from Ministry of Education for the development of sex life skill and reproductive health for the teacher.