Zimbabwe Abortion Incidence Study Information:
In Zimbabwe, maternal mortality is high, estimated at 651 per 100,000 live births in the 2015 Demographic and Health Survey, and unsafe abortion represents one of its leading causes. In the Eastern African region, an estimated 34 out of 1,000 women aged 15-44 had abortions in 2010-2014 and 18% of maternal mortality was due to unsafe abortion in the sub-region. It is unknown, however, how many women in Zimbabwe have unsafe abortions, nor the consequences of unsafe abortion. This project, a collaboration between the Guttmacher Institute, the University of Zimbabwe-University of California San Francisco Collaborative Research Program, and the Zimbabwe Ministry of Health and Child Care, will fill a major gap in the evidence base by producing and widely disseminating the first-ever national estimates of unsafe abortion and abortion-related complications in Zimbabwe.
The first component of this study is the Abortion Incidence Complications Method (AICM), including the Health Facilities Survey and Health Professional Survey, which will estimate the current national incidence of abortion and unintended pregnancies, the rate of women who were treated for complications resulting from unsafe abortion, and the quality of and access to post-abortion care services in Zimbabwe. This indirect estimation methodology has been validated in over 22 countries over the past two decades. The second component of the study is the Prospective Morbidity Study (PMS), which will estimate the severity of abortion-related morbidity and delays in accessing post-abortion care from interviews with patients and healthcare providers.
The results of this study are expected by early 2018.
To contact the study team, please email: gynaemadzi@y7mail.com
