90% of women’s contraceptives needs met, says Lancet study

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The number of women of reproductive age (15-49) in India who face the need to prevent pregnancies but have no access to contraceptives reduced by over 13 percentage points between 1970 and 2019, reports a study on worldwide contraceptive use published in The Lancet journal recently.

Based on the results, over 160 million adolescents (15-19 years) and women (20-49 years) ‘remain with unmet need for contraception worldwide’, while the ‘demand satisfied’ category has grown to 79% in 2019, from 55% in 1970.

The study, conducted by researchers from the University of Washington, US, provides estimates on worldwide contraceptive use — its overall need and the types used — having tracked it continuously from 1970 to 2019, categorising the data by country, age group and marital status.

According to the data published, in 2019, about 8.5% of women and adolescents in India had an unmet need of contraceptives and as many as 62.2% in India used female sterilisation as contraception.

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“In India, the larger proportion of women using female sterilisation is likely to be associated with incentives for sterilisation provided to some groups by the Indian government,” the authors write in the study.