Abstract
The SHOPS Plus project conducted a market shaping assessment of pregnancy tests in India, which shows that the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare supports the use of pregnancy tests. The ministry actively procures the tests, and they are widely available in public clinics free of charge and in the private sector at a range of prices. Affordability is not a problem in public clinics, but could not be fully evaluated in the private sector without population-based analysis. Awareness of pregnancy tests is not an apparent problem. Product design and quality did not emerge as stakeholder concerns in this assessment but need to be fully evaluated under separate methods.
Opportunities for improvement largely relate to clinical practice and provider training in the use of pregnancy tests, as well as the World Health Organization (WHO) pregnancy checklist. Given the limited and varied reliance on both the tests and the checklist in clinics, there may be options for decreasing provider reliance on the “first five days” criterion and increasing same-day start of contraception through increasing provider familiarity and confidence in using them. Another recommendation is to consider developing a new brief on guidance for combined use of the pregnancy tests and checklist, along with the importance of same-day initiation for United States Agency for International Development (USAID) missions and implementing partners. A third recommendation is to develop outreach and communication programs for women using home tests to motivate them to access family planning services.
