Celia Karp, Kelsey Williams, Shannon N Wood, Funmilola M OlaOlorun, Pierre Akilimali, Georges Guiella, Peter Gichangi, Rosine Mosso, Frederick Makumbi, Philip A Anglewicz, Caroline Moreau
Many speculated that COVID-19 would severely restrict the delivery of essential health services, including family planning (FP), but evidence of this impact is limited, partly due to data limitations. We use cross-sectional data collected from regional and national samples of health facilities (n = 2,610) offering FP across seven low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) between 2019 and 2021, with longitudinal data from four geographies, to examine reported disruptions to the FP service environment during COVID-19, assess how these disruptions varied according to health system characteristics, and evaluate how disruptions evolved throughout the first two years of the pandemic, relative to a pre-pandemic period...
2024: PLOS Glob Public Health