CAC is a comprehensive approach in provision of high-quality abortion care for women and girls and includes provision of counselling, provision of woman centred abortion care, provision of post abortion contraception counselling and services, and provision of post abortion follow-up support.  

We support the health system to expand access to CAC by training health care providers on service provision, training of health managers and coordinators on program support, provision of joint supportive supervision to health care facilities and service providers, collaborating with the Ethiopian Pharmaceutical Supplies Services and training of pharmacists for availability and sustainability of supplies for the service, and through regular monitoring and review of the program.  

Ipas played an important role in the development of the national CAC training manual which has mainly endorsed Ipas’s woman centered abortion care training manual. We use a national training manual to train health care providers.

We are incorporating CAC training into the Catchment Based Clinical Mentoring intervention as well. This approach is in line with the Structured On-the-Job Training (SOJT) where the trainees stay at their duty station while getting the training by a trained provider either from the same facility or another facility within the catchment.  

Ipas Ethiopia incorporated CC into its program in 2008. Comprehensive contraception includes provision of counselling and services that fulfils the need of the woman based on informed choice. Our CC program helped us to integrate abortion and contraception services for a more comprehensive and effective program implementation. We train our CAC providers on CC to integrate the two programs at a provider level so that women and girls can get post abortion contraception from the same provider that provides abortion care services.  

Apart from integration of CAC with CC, we support the health system for its stand-alone CC services with the same approach of training of health care providers by using the national training manuals that are developed with our participation, training of health managers and pharmacists, providing technical support on joint supportive supervision and review and monitoring of the program. 

We use digital health technologies to share accurate information about reproductive health and help them to access abortion and contraceptive services. We use various innovative digital technologies that range from mobile phones-based SMS to mobile phone apps and social media graphics and videos that put SRH information closer to young people and women living in urban setting.

We use SMS based mobile information to reach university students. We have also adapted and launched Hesperian’s abortion and family planning apps to both educate women/young people and assist service providers with sexual and reproductive health needs and guidance, Engaging social media firms, we developed and disseminated various social media videos and graphics aimed at building knowledge and advance discussion around abortion. Our collaboration with “Letena Ethiopia”- a local digital health information provider company- aimes at educating and fostering open discussions on safe abortion practices. We also work towards empowering individuals to make informed decisions regarding reproductive health. This intervention also contributes towards shifting societal attitudes towards abortion.