Welcome to the Journal of Family Planning blog

My aim is to bring you news, views and information in the field of contraception and sexual health – some of which you may have seen and some not. I hope that as well as highlighting articles and issues from our journal this will signpost current issues and initiatives from the UK and around the world.

It has been an eventful year in contraception with a number of changes for clinical practice and over the coming weeks I will revisit the most important of these.

A round-up of some recent news items includes:

Mary Robinson calls for more funds for Family Planning.

As world leaders collected at the UN in New York last week Mary Robinson, the first woman president of Ireland (1990-1997), UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997-2002, and chairwoman of the Global Leaders Council for Reproductive Health called for them to make good on their promise of 17 years ago at the UN International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, when they agreed to make contraceptive services available for women all over the world by 2015. http://www.newsday.com/opinion/oped/robinson-more-funds-for-family-planning-1.3187083

WHO Medical Eligibility Criteria for Contraceptive Use 4th ed wins first prize in the BMA Book Awards (O&G category).

The WHO MEC are the basis from which the UK MEC were developed and underpin clinical practice in contraception and sexual health. The most recent version of the UKMEC was published 2009:http://www.fsrh.org/pdfs/UKMEC2009.pdf

Medscape Education Clinical Briefs report a pooled analysis of 2 studies which seem to demonstrate that Intrauterine Devices Lower Cervical Cancer Risk. This involved 10 case-control studies done in 8 countries, and 16 studies of HPV prevalence from 16 countries looking at risks for cancer of the cervix and HPV in IUD users. http://www.medscape.org/viewarticle/749724?src=cmemp

In Rwanda, Africa’s most densely populated country, men are being encouraged to have vasectomies. The no-scalpel procedure is being offered for free according to a report in the Independent Newspaper on 7th September.

Unapproved emergency birth control medicine in U.S. may be ineffective and unsafe. In July the FDA issued a warning to consumers not to buy a product named Evital as they may have been counterfeit. http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm265847.htm

I welcome comments from readers and will publish those that I feel will be helpful to others.

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