Research Publications

Women-centered abortion care in public health facilities in four regions of Ethiopia: An assessment of service quality from women’s and provider’s perspectives

Unsafe abortion has been one of the main causes of maternal death in Ethiopia. Recognizing this, the abortion law was revised in 2005 and legal induced abortion has been permitted for specific indications. As a result, comprehensive abortion care (CAC) with different implementing guidelines has been expanded to reduce unsafe abortion in the country.

Published: 2020

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Unsafe abortion has been one of the main causes of maternal death in Ethiopia. Recognizing this, the abortion law was revised in 2005 and legal induced abortion has been permitted for specific indications. As a result, comprehensive abortion care (CAC) with different implementing guidelines has been expanded to reduce unsafe abortion in the country. Different researches indicate that the contribution of unsafe abortion to maternal mortality has declined from about 32% in early 2000 to between 6% and 10% in 2014. However, in the past five years, the proportion of women presenting to public health facilities for post-abortion care has increased and the proportion of women leaving health facilites with postabortion contraception has showed decreasing pattern. In line with this, the responsiveness of the health sytem in meeting the expectation of clients and the barriers for accessing safe abortion care and post-abortion contraception in the public health facilities have not been clearly explored and understood. Measuring quality of care is an integral part of health system and coverage improvement strategies but there are a few abortion-realted quality of care studies condcucted in Ethiopia. Although CAC service’s quality of care indicators has been monitored routinely, there are emrging issues that indicate quality concern. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to assess the quality of abortion care services in public health facilities with focus on the extent of people-centeredness of the healthcare system.