RESUMO
PIP: A follow-up studies of Egyptian women who attended a class on natural family planning indicates that the women who completed the course and were motivated to avoid or delay pregnancy were successful at it. Begun in 1982, the Natural Family Planning (Billings)/Egypt (NFPB/Egypt) program offers training in the Ovulation (Billings) Method, which can be used to both achieve and avoid pregnancy. To complete the course, women needed to have charted 6 menstrual cycles. In 1985, the program decided to conduct a follow-study, and it contacted 203 of the approximately 500 women who had attended at least some of the classes. Of the 203 women, 41% (84) had taken the classes to achieve pregnancy, 18% (36) to space or delay pregnancy, and 41% (83) to avoid pregnancy. 76% of this group had actually completed the course. While 15 of the women who had dropped out of the course did so because they had become pregnant, all of the unwanted pregnancies in this group were among women who were breastfeeding or in the post-pill period. Among the women who had finished the course and whose aim was to delay or avoid pregnancy, 8 had become pregnancies, but 4 of the women said that they had in fact wanted the pregnancy. The other 4 were unwanted pregnancies. NFPB/Egypt also conducted interviews with 25 of the women. 19 of them continued to use the Billings Method, 13 of whom were using it to avoid pregnancy. Of the 6 women no longer practicing the Billings Method, 3 had had an IUD inserted, and the other 3 were trying to achieve pregnancy.^ieng
