Post-abortion careExperts share immediate and intermediate precautions for faster recovery

INTRODUCTION Abortion means termination of pregnancy. This could be done for medically indicated reasons such as an abnormality in the fetus detected on ultrasound or severe health conditions in the mother.

Or, it can be done on request by the woman or couple due to various reasons including failure of contraception or social reasons.

It is a common procedure done by gynaecologists in healthcare facilities and is mostly quite safe. However, if done under unsafe conditions it can be life-threatening to the woman. An estimated 25 million unsafe abortions occur every year, making it one of the leading causes of maternal mortality and morbidity worldwide. In India, 67% of abortions in the study population in India were classified as unsafe, varying widely across the states. It was found to be higher among the vulnerable and disadvantaged populations in India. Also, young women aged 15-19 years were at the highest risk of dying from an abortion-related complication. Hence, there is an urgent need to understand the barriers to women seeking abortion care in all tiers of urban and rural India and act upon improving abortion care.

A termination may have been performed in the first trimester (4-13 weeks) or the second trimester (13 weeks to 24 weeks). The more advanced the stage of pregnancy, the higher the complications.