Creativity, serendipity, and collaboration: Cross-cutting features of successful task-sharing in comprehensive safe abortion care

Abstract

Limited capacity to deliver comprehensive safe abortion care and shortages in trained healthcare providers contribute to a lack of access to safe services. The World Health Organization published guidelines and recommendations on expanding health worker roles through task-sharing as one way to address disparities. A multicountry case study was conducted in six diverse contexts (Bangladesh, Colombia, Ghana, Mexico City in Mexico, Sweden, and Tunisia) to determine the cross-cutting strategies that enabled inclusion of a broader range of healthcare workers in comprehensive safe abortion care. Five strategies emerged: leveraging of favorable contexts, policies, and guidelines; use of evidence for advocacy; building upon existing task-sharing; mitigation of negative responses to abortion and task-sharing; and collaboration across sectors. The findings suggest that there are potential opportunities for stakeholders to employ these strategies in many contexts to broaden health worker roles in comprehensive safe abortion care.

Keywords: Comprehensive safe abortion care; Country case study; Healthcare worker; Task-sharing; WHO guideline.