Australia needs improvement on guidelines for the morning after pill

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2026-02-05 00:01

Australia; QLD

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Australian pharmacists may not always be prescribing the most effective morning-after pill, according to long-form interviews with 17 community pharmacists about how they handle requests for emergency contraception. Two morning-after pills are available in Australia - the cheaper LNG pill and the more effective UPA pill. During in-depth discussions with the pharmacists who came from pharmacies across urban, rural and remote Australia, the researchers say they heard many of the pharmacists were mostly recommending the LNG pill because they were more familiar with it, because it was cheaper, it was the only one in stock or because of a lack of confidence recommending it to teens or gender diverse individuals. They say the pharmacists expressed a desire for simpler, clearer guidelines around when to prescribe which pill, as well as other challenging situations such as consent for minors and people requesting the pill on behalf of another person.