Expanding health worker roles and decentralizing safe abortion and postabortion care: Experiences in diverse settings

Abstract

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Medical abortion in India – An imperative need for task sharing

“…[ 22 ] More recently plenty of evidence is emerging regarding safety and efficacy of medical abortion by mid-level workers. [ 23 ] WHO guideline in 2015 provides a recommendation on role of trained nonphysician healthcare provider for providing safe abortion, postabortion care, and contraception at primary care level. [ 24 ] Therefore, keeping this recommendation in perspective, provision of training, and involvement of nonphysician healthcare personnel should be made permissible in the current MTP act of India in order to achieve uniform and wider availability of safe abortion services.…”

Legal and policy responses to the delivery of abortion care during COVID‐19

“…This raises some problems for providers in that it limits the provider pool and increases both waiting times and the cost of providing care 19 . The WHO recommends that task‐sharing be adopted in the delivery of health services to optimize delivery 21,22 . During the pandemic (and beyond), permitting, for example, nurse prescribing would simplify access and reduce administrative burdens on doctors, thereby enabling doctors to focus on cases that involve more complex management.…”

“… 19 The WHO recommends that task‐sharing be adopted in the delivery of health services to optimize delivery. 21 , 22 During the pandemic (and beyond), permitting, for example, nurse prescribing would simplify access and reduce administrative burdens on doctors, thereby enabling doctors to focus on cases that involve more complex management. There is some extent to which regional providers have already attempted to adopt task‐sharing as far as is possible—for example, BPAS provides initial consultations with nurse‐midwives, including the obtaining of patient consent, before doctors review the case and sign off on the prescription.…”