News

In the UK, new guidance issued by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) aims to improve access to high quality contraceptive services, especially for young people up to the age of 25. Recommendations on emergency contraception (EC) include: ensuring that young women (and young men) know where to obtain free EC; informing…

Pro Familia Hungaria’s Affiliation Society of Békés County and the Reproductive Health Working Group of the Regional Committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences at Szeged have translated ICEC’s Emergency Contraceptive Pills: Medical and Service Delivery Guidelines into Hungarian. In an effort to fulfill its mission to increase knowledge and access to EC in Europe, ECEC…

ECEC is excited to introduce a new guidelines template, which intends to aid in the development or updating of EC guidelines in European countries according to the best available evidence. Download emergency contrantraception: A guideline for service provision in Europe here. Developed with the support of the European Society of Contraception, this tool addresses the…

WHO has released new guidelines on priority actions needed to ensure that different human rights dimensions are systematically and clearly integrated into the provision of contraceptive information and services. Regarding EC, the guidelines recommend that EC be included within the essential medicine supply chain; that special efforts be made to provide comprehensive EC information and…

A Behavior and Attitudes survey carried out on behalf of Bayer Healthcare found that in the last two years, approximately 17% of women had accessed EC, with 5% accessing it more than once. Read more about the survey here.

On March 5, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) is hosting a conference to launch the results of the largest violence against women survey ever undertaken in the EU.  Findings are based on interviews with 42,000 women across the 28 EU Member States and focus on women’s experiences of physical, sexual, and psychological…

A study published in the European Journal of Contraception and Reproductive Health Care in 2013 sought to identify knowledge of and attitudes towards EC among women from five European countries. Sexually-active women from France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom were asked about their use of and opinions on EC in an internet-based survey….

As evidenced by these pictures from Bulgaria, some European countries allow advertising of over-the-counter medical products. This particular ad is for EC and has been placed on the side of a shopping cart.

Following a long debate in Germany over whether LNG EC should have an over the counter status, the German Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices recommended recently that emergency contraception pills should be available without a prescription. It is now up to the Minister of Health to decide whether he will adopt the recommendation…

It was recently reported that the Spanish National Health Service (NHS) does not fund EC nor does it reimburse patients who purchase EC. Furthermore, EC availability is dependent on the regions within Spain, and it is not universally available throughout the country. This issue was raised by Grupo Parlamentario de Unión Progreso y Democracia (UPyD),…