Management support for postabortion operations research at the Egyptian Fertility Care Society

The ANE OR/TA Project started its first five-year phase in 1991 addressing increased choice and accessibility of contraceptive use, promoting quality of family planning (FP) services in Asia and the Near East, and promoting the use of operations research (OR) to solve service-delivery problems. The first phase emphasized human resource development. During the years leading up to the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development, there was increased global attention to issues related to reproductive health (RH), and in particular the adverse health implications of harmful RH practices, including unsafe abortion. OR was being called upon to help implement this shift in the population field. In Egypt, the ANE OR/TA Project guided policymakers toward improving postabortion care. A 1994–95 pilot study to improve postabortion care was conducted to test the feasibility of studying postabortion care and to investigate acceptability of service-delivery improvements. The Egyptian Fertility Care Society implemented this first postabortion-care study. As noted in this report, the project’s long-term objective was to contribute to the development of Egyptian NGO institutional capacity to conduct OR and improve dissemination of findings for enhanced management and informed policymaking.