Abortion-related mortality and morbidity result in significant health system costs. Approximately 42 million induced abortions occur around the world each year, 1 of which an estimated 22 million are conducted under unsafe conditions-that is, by an unqualified provider, in unsanitary conditions or both. 2 At least 65,000 women die annually from complications of unsafe abortion, and close to five million suffer temporary or permanent disability. 3 A recent analysis suggests that in Africa and Latin America, the annual cost of caring for women with complications of unsafe abortion ranges from US$159 million to US$333 million. 4 According to studies from a number of countries where the incidence of unsafe abortion is high, treatment of abortion complications can account for as much as 50% of hospital budgets for obstetrics and gynecology. 5 Abortion-related mortality and morbidity-and their associated health system costs-can largely be avoided through the prevention of unwanted pregnancy and through the provision of safe abortion services and menstrual regulation. 6 The technical and clinical interventions needed to provide safe, accessible and high quality abortion and menstrual regulation services are well known and include using vacuum aspiration or medication abortion instead of dilation and curettage for uterine evacuation; providing services in outpatient facilities, rather than in operating theaters; having midlevel providers instead of specialists provide care; and providing contraceptive counseling and services. 7-21 Each of these interventions has been shown to reduce the cost of care at the individual, facility or health system levels. 9,12,15,[17][18][19][20][21] Despite the advantages of these interventions in terms of safety and cost, they are often not implemented or are used inconsistently, preventing measurement of costs of services at facility or health system levels.Savings-an abortion-oriented costing spreadsheet-was developed by Ipas to generate estimates of the costs of different strategies of providing abortion care. The initial application of the Savings model used published data primarily from Uganda; 22 however, because the abortion law in Uganda is restrictive, some data from other African countries were used to project costs of providing safe and legal abortion-related care. Results suggest that use of recommended technical interventions would substantially reduce costs of providing abortion care.In Bangladesh, the abortion law is also restrictive; however, menstrual regulation-defined as the evacuation of the uterus of a woman at risk of being pregnant to ensure a state of nonpregnancy-is provided by the government as a backup to contraception for women up to 10 weeks from the beginning of their last menstrual period. The procedure is sanctioned by the government and available at all levels of the public health care system. The Bangladesh menstrual regulation program has had many of the recommended best practices for abortion-
Health System Costs of Menstrual Regulation and Care For Ab...