COVID 19 era: a beginning of upsurge in unwanted pregnancies, unmet need for contraception and other women related issues

Abstract

The Novel Coronavirus disease that was first identified in Wuhan city of China in December 2019 has emerged as one of the fastest spreading pandemics all over the world affecting millions of people and causing millions of deaths worldwide. In an attempt to control its spread, countries have imposed local and national lockdowns, affecting many healthcare services, especially sexual and reproductive health services which are actually essential and lifesaving. In near future this will result in a large number of grave consequences including increased unmet need for modern contraceptives, unintended pregnancies, increased unsafe abortions, maternal and neonatal deaths and other harmful practices like female genital mutilation and child marriages in developing countries. The present short review focusses on such issues which will be dramatically increased depending on the duration of lockdowns and the time for which the sexual and reproductive health services will remain halted. It also reflects the need for considering reproductive health services as essential, allowing the people to avail these services without any fear and hence, saving many more lives which will be lost not due to coronavirus infection. Methodology: The data was searched from various governmental and non-governmental organisation sites including the World Health Organisation, United Nations, United Nations Population Fund, Guttmacher Institute and many PubMed indexed journals.

摘要

2019年12月发现于中国武汉市的新型冠状病毒疾病已成为全世界传播速度最快的流行病之一, 影响了全球数百万人并导致数百万人死亡。为了控制其传播, 各国在地方和全国范围内实行了封锁, 影响了许多保健服务, 特别是实际上至关重要的和拯救生命的性健康和生殖健康服务。在不久的将来, 这将导致许多严重后果, 包括对现代避孕药具的需求未得到满足增加, 意外怀孕增加, 不安全流产增加, 产妇和新生儿死亡的增加以及发展中国家的其他有害习俗增加, 如女性生殖器切割和童婚。本简短审查集中在这类问题上, 根据封锁的持续时间以及性健康和生殖健康服务将继续停止的时间, 这些问题将大大增加。它还反映了将生殖健康服务视为必不可少服务的必要性, 使人们能够毫无畏惧地利用这些服务, 从而挽救更多不是由于冠状病毒感染而失去的生命。研究方法：这些数据搜索自不同的政府和非政府组织的网站, 包括世界卫生组织、联合国、联合国人口基金、古特马赫研究所和许多PubMed索引期刊。

Keywords:

• Abortion
• contraceptive
• family planning
• pregnancy
• unmet need

Acknowledgement

I thank Adhvan Singh and Nutty Singh for their constant support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).