The Reproductive Health Training Center launched the first service of medical abortion managed from a distance, through telemedicine. The goal of the project is to facilitate the women’s access to medical abortion services during the COVID-19 pandemic, IPN reports.
Contacted by IPN for details, the Center’s director Rodica Comendant said they took the decision to launch such a service because the women cannot now choose how and when to have an abortion. Medical abortion is allowed in Moldova and the Reproductive Health Training Center carried out a number of studies that confirmed the results of international studies showing that it is a safe method recommended by the World Health Organization and that does not affect the woman’s reproductive health.
To benefit from this service, the woman should access the website that was specially created for the service www.avort.md/prin_telemedicina/ so as to confirm the pregnancy by a test and to calculate the pregnancy term. This term should not be longer than nine weeks or the service will not be provided. Later the patient will be contacted by a video call or an ordinary call by a gynecologist so as to discuss all the unclear aspects and later the patient accesses the drugs. The prescription for the medicines is transmitted photographed. If the drugs are not available in local drugstores, the preparations are sent through mail or a courier.
In a week, the doctor will make a new call to see if the abortion took place fully. “Most of the women do not experience difficulties,” said the gynecologist. As a rule, the problems that can appear are solved from a distance and the patient usually takes a new dose of the medicine that this already has. In four weeks, the patient will repeat the pregnancy test for a definitive assessment.
“We permitted ourselves to do this basing on our long-lasting experience, of about 15 years, on the fact that we also took part in a lot of studies. This method turned out to be very safe and efficient,” said Rodica Comendant. The doctor noted she found support for this process at the Ministry of Health, Labor and Social Protection and, in particular, at the Primary Medicine Department.
The Center’s director also said that a rise in the number of unwanted pregnancies and of wishes to interrupt these pregnancies is expected given the experience of other states in situations of humanitarian crisis or in emergency situations.
The gynecologist related that that the medical abortion is safer for women than surgical abortion, including for their fertility. The pills these take are intended only for unwanted pregnancies and do not affect other organs.
The abortion service through telemedicine is implemented as part of the two-year pilot project “Medical abortion through telemedicine for women and adolescents from rural areas of Moldova: removal of barriers with assistance of technology”. Since the end of March when the project was launched, 25 women got rid of unwanted pregnancies this way.
The Reproductive Health Training Center is a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization founded in 1998 to safeguard and promote the sexual and reproductive health and rights.
