Contraception (Birth Control) and Family Planning PubHealthInfo

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PubHealth.info® (a subsidiary of PakMed) presents scientific information mainly based on abstracts of articles published on a variety of public health issues/topics, particularly encompassing population planning, disease prevention, maternal and child health, and communicable and non-communicable diseases (like HIV AIDS, malaria, etc) that are affecting a significant portion of population in developing and developed countries. Here you can find abstracts of articles published on a variety of public health topics under category "Contraception (Birth Control) and Family Planning". Contraception (birth control) is a regimen of one or more actions, devices, or medications followed in order to deliberately prevent or reduce the likelihood of a woman becoming pregnant or giving birth. Therefore contraception is the utilization of various and sundry surgical procedures, devices, practices, agents, or drugs with the intention of preventing conception or impregnation (pregnancy). Methods and intentions typically termed birth control may be considered a pivotal ingredient to family planning. Birth control is a controversial political and ethical issue in many cultures and religions, and although it is generally less controversial than abortion specifically.

YEAR: 1983

CATEGORY: Contraception (Birth Control) and Family Planning

TITLE

Natural family planning [letter]

AUTHORS

Agius M

SOURCE

Practitioner. 1983 Sep;227(1383):1350-2.

ABSTRACT

It was perhaps quite fortunate that your edition of May 1983 contained a book review of Billings and Westmore's "The

Billings method," which was generally quite positive, as the paper "Contraception today" by Dr. Rowlands certainly did

not give an adequate treatment to natural family planning (NFP), the demand for which is certainly increasing, at

least in my part of the country. There are now at least 4 quite different variants of NFP: the obsolete rhythm method,

the temperature method, the Billings method, and the symptothermal method, of which there are many variants.

However, Dr. Rowlands lumps them all together as "rhythm" giving us a failure rate "at the bottom of the table." This

is surely unscientific, since the various methods are quite different and have demonstrably different failure rates. We

are told by Dr. Rowlands that a preovulatory calculation or the use of the Billings method should be discouraged, but

we are then told that the symptothermal method (which does use the secretion of cervical mucus to identify the end

of the preovulatory infertile phase) "gives reasonable results." All trials that I know of using the symptothermal

method use a preovulatory phase based on a calculation, mucus detection, or both. The fact is that a number of

trials have now been carried out which show that the symptothermal method is an effective means of family planning.

This Dr. Rowlands concedes by quoting Flynn's figure of 1.1 pregnancies/100 woman-years. Unfortunately, in this

country most doctors and nurses do not know how to teach couples to use NFP effectively. This is important, as

NFP does not put the woman's health at risk and is believed to enhance the marriage relationship. One hopes that

there will be further discussion on this in a future symposium on Women's Health. (PubHealth.info Document ID:

CONT5T 2009-06)

PubHealth.info NOTE: The author(s) of this article titled, "Natural family planning [letter]", is(are) Agius M. The

source of this article is "Practitioner. 1983 Sep;227(1383):1350-2.". This article was published in 1983 in English

language(s). (PubHealth.info® Document ID: CONT5T 2009-06. All rights reserved with PubHealth.info) PIN: 22009

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