Medical abortion: the Tunisian experience

Abstract

This paper reports the Tunisian experience of medical abortion. The project started in 1998 with a small introductory study at the obstetric and gynaecology department of a university hospital and was later extended step by step to other family planning and public health centres that provided abortion services. The study was first conducted on 264 women using the modified regimen of 200mg mifepristone, followed 48 hours later by 400 microg misoprostol in women seeking pregnancy of maximum 56 days of amenorrhoea. This gave a success rate of 91.1%. Results from further studies in other locations showed increasing success rates of 94.4% and 95.6%, with high acceptability and satisfaction among users and providers The registration and effective introduction of medical abortion was quite rapid. Following successful conduct of the pilot study, intervention programmes were designed and implemented to improve the capacity of providers in providing safe medical abortion.