WOMEN’S Health Grampians chief executive Marianne Hendron hopes a new study into unintended pregnancies in the region will help improve the options available to women.
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The organisation’s study found that there were major service gaps in the region for women with unintended pregnancies. It found that less than a third of Wimmera general practitioners would ‘sometimes or always’ discuss medical abortions with women.
Ms Hendron said the study would now be used for advocacy to improve knowledge among doctors and women.
“We’ve already sent the report to the minister for health to make her aware of this situation,” she said.
“We are also talking with primary health networks to try to establish a referral pathway for doctors.
“This will mean that a doctor could log onto their computer and find options and pathways for a woman that were relevant to the region.
“We would also like to work with training around medical termination of pregnancies as there is a fairly straightforward training program required for doctors to provide that option to women and we want to help them access that training.
Ms Hendron said Women’s Health Grampians would also develop programs to ensure more information was available to women.
“Therefore, even if they can’t get the information from their doctor, they could do a search online and find it more readily,” she said.
The research was presented at Women’s Health Grampians’ annual meeting last week.