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Lower- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are experiencing rapid changes in access to and use of new internet and digital media technologies. The purpose of this study was to better understand how younger audiences are navigating traditional and newer forms of media technologies, with particular emphasis on the skills and competencies needed to obtain, evaluate and apply health-related information, also defined as health and media literacy. Sixteen focus group discussions were conducted throughout Senegal in September 2012 with youth aged 15-25. Using an iterative coding process based on grounded theory, four themes emerged related to media use for health information among Senegalese youth. They include the following: (i) media utilization; (ii) barriers and conflicts regarding media utilization; (iii) uses and gratifications and (iv) health and media literacy. Findings suggest that Senegalese youth use a heterogeneous mix of media platforms (i.e. television, radio, internet) and utilization often occurs with family members or friends. Additionally, the need for entertainment, information and connectedness inform media use, mostly concerning sexual and reproductive health information. Importantly, tensions arise as youth balance innovative and interactive technologies with traditional and conservative values, particularly concerning ethical and privacy concerns. Findings support the use of multipronged intervention approaches that leverage both new media, as well as traditional media strategies, and that also address lack of health and media literacy in this population. Implementing health-related interventions across multiple media platforms provides an opportunity to create an integrated, as opposed to a disparate, user experience.

Post-abortion care (PAC) integrates elements that are vital for women's survival after abortion complications and their ability to meet their subsequent fertility intentions. Currently, the utilization of PAC among women in need remains too low, particularly in settings where unsafe abortion is an appreciable cause of maternal mortality. Interventions have aimed at addressing unmet need; however, these still require information on the extent to which women value different aspects of PAC. This paper presents such evidence from Dakar, Senegal. Exit interviews with 729 PAC clients in 2018 at eight health facilities obtained information on patient characteristics, content of services received and women's perceptions of the quality of care, both overall and according to subject-specific domains. These domains reflect aspects of PAC that are relevant to clients' satisfaction: accessibility, facility environment, information and counselling, family planning, provider technical competence and readiness and client-staff interaction. Ordinal logistic regression models were estimated to identify factors that were associated with women's rating of overall quality of care (on a scale of 1 to 5, 1 being lowest). Predictors that were significantly associated with the outcome were used in a multivariate ordinal logistic regression model that estimated the probability of positive differences in the outcome associated with women's classification of each predictor. Women reported a mean rating of 3.7 for overall quality of care. The lowest domain-specific rating was for quality of information and counselling (mean=2.4) and the highest was for client-staff interaction (mean=3.8). Factors associated with clients' higher odds of being more satisfied with PAC were: physical comfort during the procedure, recall of counselling on treatment procedure, privacy, perceived availability of supplies and medicines, facility admission process, facility cleanliness, waiting time, clarity of counselling and access to different contraceptive methods. Interventions that target these factors may improve the utilization of PAC in Dakar, Senegal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Timely access to treatment is essential for women when they experience abortion complications. Out-of-pocket (OOP) expenditure is a known barrier to health care access. In 2018, we assessed the financial burden of accessing postabortion care (PAC) borne by women in Dakar, Senegal, where studies estimate that half of poor women with complications obtain PAC. We interviewed 729 women following discharge from PAC. Women reported expenditures on transportation, admission, treatment, family planning, hospitalisation, complementary tests, prescriptions, other medicines and materials. We compare women's OOP on PAC by expenditure category, type of treatment and facility type, and use multiple generalised linear regression analysis to explain variation in overall OOP and forecast it under alternate scenarios. The average OOP was USD $93.84. At health centres it was $65.47 and at hospitals it was $120.47. The average cost of PAC using dilation and curettage was $112.37, manual vacuum aspiration was $99.84, and misoprostol $61.80. Overall OOP on PAC amounts, on average, to 15% of the average monthly salary for women living in Dakar. Strategies that emphasise timely access to misoprostol for treating complications in primary care settings will address the contribution of OOP costs to Senegal's appreciable unmet need for PAC among the poor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women in many countries are often denied vital family planning services if they are not menstruating when they present at clinics, for fear that they might be pregnant. A simple checklist based on criteria approved by the World Health Organization has been developed to help providers rule out pregnancy among such clients, but its use is not yet widespread. Researchers in Guatemala, Mali, and Senegal conducted operations research to determine whether a simple, replicable introduction of this checklist improved access to contraceptive services by reducing the proportion of clients denied services. From 2001 to 2003, sociodemographic and service data were collected from 4,823 women from 16 clinics in three countries. In each clinic, data were collected prior to introduction of the checklist and again three to six weeks after the intervention. Among new family planning clients, denial of the desired method due to menstrual status decreased significantly from 16 percent to 2 percent in Guatemala and from 11 percent to 6 percent in Senegal. Multivariate analyses and bivariate analyses of changes within subgroups of nonmenstruating clients confirmed and reinforced these statistically significant findings. In Mali, denial rates were essentially unchanged, but they were low from the start. Where denial of services to nonmenstruating family planning clients was a problem, introduction of the pregnancy checklist significantly reduced denial rates. This simple, inexpensive job aid improves women's access to essential family planning services., Although family planning clinics are now commonly established throughout the developing world, women who attend them in many countries are still routinely denied effective contraception as a result of arbitrary, [...]