To work towards making safe abortion services accessible in rural areas, ARTH was part of a 6-state study on the situation analysis of abortion services.
The study revealed that in Rajasthan:
- There are 338 private MTP certified facilities, which amounts to a mere 0.6% private certified facilities per 100,000 population.
- There is dominance of informal providers of women’s health service in rural areas- about 2 per 1000 population
- MTP remains a highly medicalised procedure, being carried out in OT under general anesthesia and requiring admission a day earlier. This does not allow services to be delivered at primary care levels.
- Most mandated government facilities were non-functional. The functional ones met MTP facility standards to a lesser extent as compared to private institutions.
- Most commonly used abortion techniques include D&C and EVA even by formally trained providers.