Abstract
Drug shops and pharmacies have long been recognized as the first point of contact
for health care in developing countries, including family planning (FP) services.
Drug shop operators and pharmacists should not be viewed as mere merchants of short-acting
contraceptive methods, as this ignores their capacity for increasing uptake of FP
services and methods in a systematic and collaborative way with the public sector,
social marketing groups and product distributors. We draw on lessons learned from
the rich experience of earlier efforts to promote a variety of public health interventions
in pharmacies and drug shops. To integrate this setting that provides convenience,
confidentiality, access to user-controlled contraceptive methods (i.e., pills, condoms
and potentially Sayana Press®) and a gateway to clinic-based FP services, we propose
three promising practices that should be encouraged in future interventions to increase
access to quality FP services.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: August 28, 2018
Accepted:
August 14,
2018
Received in revised form:
August 13,
2018
Received:
March 14,
2018
Footnotes
☆Acknowledgment of funding: Funding for the literature search and desk review was provided by the USAID-funded SIFPO (Support for International Family Planning and Health Organizations) 2: Sustainable Networks project (SOL-OAA-13-000074) primed by Marie Stopes International. Manuscript development was funded by the USAID-funded project, APC (Advancing Partners and Communities) project (AID-OAA-A-12-00047) primed by JSI.
☆☆Conflict of interest statement: The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
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