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In Honduras, 54 percent of deliveries are assisted by medical staff and 39 percent of deliveries take place at Ministry of Health of Honduras (MOH) health centers or hospitals. Although the unmet need for family planning services is relatively high (11% of women) and family planning helps protect mothers' and children's health, hospitals in Honduras rarely offer postpartum/postabortion contraceptive services.Between 1996 and 1999, the Ministry of Health and the Population Council's INOPAL III Project tested the acceptability of postpartum/postabortion contraception at the Escuela Hospital, the largest in the country. The project showed that more than 30 percent of the women seen for a delivery or a complication due to abortion, were interested in adopting a contraceptive method prior to discharge from the hospital. Given the success of the project, the MOH asked the Population Council's FRONTIERS Program for technical and financial support to extend those services to five additional hospitals in the country.As a first step, a baseline situational analysis study was carried out in seven hospitals in order to detect needs and identify the hospitals in which postpartum/postabortion contraceptive services could be most easily introduced or strengthened. In the five hospitals selected, the results of the diagnostic study were presented, staff were trained, equipment, clinical and educational materials were provided, surveys were conducted, and quarterly meetings were held to analyze achievements and plan new activities.The baseline diagnosis showed that a great demand existed for contraceptive methods before discharge from the hospital. Only 35 percent of the women who had given birth had planned the pregnancy, and close to one-half said they would have preferred to wait longer or not become pregnant. Seventeen percent were using a method of contraception when they became pregnant. Only 44 percent wished to become pregnant in the future, and 92 percent of these women wanted to space their next pregnancy for more than two years. Important improvements were found for the four indicators used to evaluate the project: 1) the proportion of women who received information about contraceptive methods during their hospital stay increased from 43 percent to 87 percent; 2) the proportion of women who were offered a contraceptive method increased from 42 percent to 82 percent; 3) the proportion of women who received a contraceptive method during their stay increased from 10 percent to 33 percent; and finally, 4) the proportion of women who had delivered and wanted a method before leaving the hospital but did not receive it decreased from 41 percent to 7 percent. Among the women who had been treated for an abortion (close to 10% of those who had delivered), the results were even better: information increased from 17 percent to 85 percent; offering of methods increased in the same proportion; acceptance of methods increased from 13 percent to 54 percent; and unmet need decreased from 48 percent to 21 percent. In both cases, the

analysis of the integration of family planning services in postpartum, postabortion and prevention of mother to child transmission programs in Nicaragua," FRONTIERS Final Report. Washington, DC: Population Council. This Report is brought to you for free and open access by the Population Council.

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