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Women who seek emergency treatment for abortion complications—bleeding, infection, and injuries to the reproductive tract system—should be a priority group for reproductive health care programs. These women often receive poor-quality services that do not address their multiple health needs. They may be discharged without counseling on postoperative recuperation, family planning (FP), or other reproductive health (RH) issues. Women who have had an induced abortion due to an unwanted pregnancy are likely to have a repeat abortion unless they receive appropriate FP counseling and services. Preventing repeat unsafe abortions is important for RH programs because it saves women's lives, protects women's health, and reduces the need for costly emergency services for abortion complications. At the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development, the world's governments called for improvements in postabortion medical services. As part of the resulting international postabortion care initiative, the Population Council's Operations Research and Technical Assistance projects worked collaboratively to conduct research on interventions to improve postabortion care. This brief summarizes the major findings of this research and relevant studies by other international organizations.

The Global Meeting on Postabortion Care: Advances and Challenges in Operations Research was held at the Population Council's New York office on January 19–21, 1998, to review progress made by three regional operations research (OR) projects in improving delivery of postabortion care. The resources of the three OR contracts were pooled, and, in collaboration with Ipas and the Ebert Program, approximately 65 researchers, senior program managers, and government officials from Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia were convened. Three objectives guided the planning of the meeting: review progress in the development of OR methodologies pertaining to postabortion care, identify elements in the design of new postabortion care services, and suggest future areas for postabortion care OR. The meeting was organized around the presentation of 20 papers distributed to all participants several weeks earlier. Discussants presented critical syntheses of the papers and indicated directions for future OR studies. This report presents a summary overview of the principal themes and key points drawn from the papers and discussions, organized according to the theme of each session.

In Egypt, the legal, religious, and societal restrictions on abortion have constrained the provision of high-quality emergency health care services provided to postabortion patients, including links with family planning (FP) services. In 1994, a small-scale pilot study was conducted by the Egyptian Fertility Care Society and the Population Council's ANE OR/TA Project (1995) to improve postabortion care in Egypt. The study intervention included an intensive training program for physicians on the use of Manual Vacuum Aspiration instruments under local anesthesia. Physicians were also instructed in infection-control practices and counseling postabortion patients about their medical condition and FP. The study findings reflected significant improvements in the care of postabortion patients. The positive impact of this pilot study led the Population Council's ANE OR/TA Project to develop a comprehensive Introduction Program for Improved Postabortion Care in Egypt which was approved by the Government of Egypt. As noted in this report, one major component of this program is expanding the improved postabortion care services based on experiences gained in the pilot study.