Rubella and oral contraceptives
Dunn, H.P.
New Zealand Medical Journal 91(654): 154
1980
ISSN/ISBN: 0028-8446 PMID: 6929979 Document Number: 158565
In recent weeks I have encountered 4 disenchanted patients who had asked for rubella vaccinations from their family doctors and all had been refused because they were using (NFP) natural family planning. Each was told that she could not have the vaccination unless she changed over to the pill for 3 months. 1 patient had been using NFP successfully for 6 1/2 years. This unusual therapy-under-duress approach seems based on several misconceptions. 1 is that the pill never fails, another is that the pill is a sovereign remedy which can be prescribed with perfect safety to any woman of any age, and another is that NFP is inefficient. It is almost a 1/4 of a century since I published a NFP series with a method failure rate of 3/100 woman-years. Since then, advances in ovulation detection have improved the efficiency of the method. It is being taught in 70 centers throughout New Zealand and there is a New Zealand Association of NFP. There is now an International Review of NFP. It is likely that this physiological method of family planning will, like breastfeeding, pass out of the control of the profession through default.