As we wrote in TIME a few weeks ago, the urgency to ensure women have access to effective birth control has never been greater with the threat of the Zika virus.
We are proud to share with you that the CDC Foundation and the Office of Population Affairs have asked Upstream USA to provide several trainings to health care providers in Puerto Rico to support the CDC’s Zika emergency response efforts to improve contraception access.
Nearly 65 percent of all pregnancies in Puerto Rico are unplanned and nearly a quarter of Puerto Rico’s residents are estimated to be at risk for contracting Zika in the next year. The full range of contraception is not easily accessible to women, particularly in Puerto Rico, as most health care centers face logistical and financial barriers to offering IUDs and implants.
To date, we have trained approximately 100 clinicians and support staff in Puerto Rico and the initial feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, including one physician who said, “I learned so much in just one day, I’ll be able to put these new skills to work right away.”
Upstream USA trainers provide training to clinicians in Puerto Rico on 8 state-of-the-art pelvic simulators
While we are pleased to support the Zika emergency response effort, our ongoing statewide project changing contraceptive care in Delaware remains front and center and our impact continues to grow. We’ve got a couple of other exciting updates to share with you in the coming weeks, including reaching several benchmarks in Delaware. In the meantime, we encourage you to check out our new website, particularly the Impact page, where we look forward to posting our latest data highlights.
