Providing depo-subQ provera 104™ in the Uniject™ injection system

Using the Uniject prefilled injection system to deliver injectable contraception may help to increase women’s access to family planning services in developing countries. Currently, about 200 million women worldwide can’t get these services.

Lack of access to family planning options—and especially woman-initiated methods—in poor countries means that women are more likely to die from problems related to pregnancy and childbirth. In sub-Saharan Africa, where health services are especially scarce, a woman’s lifetime risk of dying as a result of getting pregnant is 1 in 22. The good news is that about one in three maternal deaths can be avoided by delaying motherhood, spacing births, preventing unintended pregnancy, and avoiding unsafely performed abortions.

Improving access to contraception

Injectable contraceptives such as Depo-Provera® are increasingly popular with women around the globe. One injection every three months provides a safe, effective, reversible, and discreet method to prevent pregnancy. Many women, however, cannot routinely get to clinics that offer this form of contraception, while others start using the method but stop because they cannot return to the clinic.

Depo-subQ provera 104™, a new subcutaneous formulation that will soon be available in the Uniject injection system, promises to help improve women’s access to injectable contraceptives. Administering the contraceptive via the Uniject injection system may not only strengthen clinics' injection services but also make it easier for injectable contraceptives to be given safely and effectively outside the clinics. Because the prefilled Uniject injection system is so easy to use, lower-level health workers will be better able to give injections in convenient community locations or in clients’ homes.

Introducing new technologies

Pfizer, the drug’s manufacturer, has registered the new formulation in the United States and expects product registration in developing countries beginning in 2012. In anticipation of product availability, PATH is assisting the US Agency for International Development to coordinate planning among a range of partners for possible global rollout of the product. PATH has also begun country-specific planning for product introduction in Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, Senegal, and Pakistan.

Uniject is a trademark of BD. Depo-Provera and depo-subQ provera 104 are trademarks of Pfizer.

Photo: PATH/Patrick McKern.