A new abortion medication that hit Canadian shelves in January faces a lot of barriers to make it easily accessible, advocates mentioned.

The drug, Mifegymiso, can be used to cancel an early pregnancy that is within 10 weeks. It’s taken as two separate medications, Mifepristone and Misoprostol. People in France can legally buy abortion pill under the name RU-486 since 1988. Among the several countries in the world, Canada became the 61stcountry to approve its use, in 2015.

There are some rules regulations proposed by the manufacturer and accepted by Canadian Government, which are usually restrictive. Those rules were primarily interpreted to mean that physicians, rather than pharmacists, had to dispense the medicine, and the women had to take the first dose under the doctor’s supervision.

Those highly strange restrictions left doctors and pharmacists wandering as they tried to analyze how it could be prescribed and sold.

However, Health department of Canadian Government has since tried to make clear those rules, following pointed questions by the British Columbia and Pharmaceutical colleges asking if pharmacists can dispense the medication and physicians simply have the option of asking patients to take the primary dose under their supervision.

That’s left a patchwork of understanding around the country, and conceivably opens up the experts providing the medicine to extra professional responsibility for not prescribing as needed by the product’s guidelines.

A pharmaceutical company, manufacturing mifegymiso mentioned it had sold nine hundred units so far, even though that doesn’t mean it’s yet been prescribed nine hundred times. It’s unclear whether anyone is tracking the number of prescriptions issued for the drug.

New rules would come:

A Canadian owned pharmaceutical Company’s spokeswoman, told that the need to take the medicine in front of a physician has changed, although she wouldn’t say when that happened.

President of that company told in the email to one the news channel that, medical supervision is required, but, it is not compulsory that the drug be swallowed in front of the doctor.

The requirement for supervision makes sure that the woman has access to emergency follow-up treatment if necessary.

This pharmaceutical company has made a second regulatory compliance, prompted by Canada government, to permit a pharmacist to distribute the medication and relax some of the rules around the product, like the number of weeks into a pregnancy it can be taken.

Presently, Canadian Government permits Mifegymiso or MTP abortion kit to be utilized up to 7 weeks into a pregnancy. However, an article in the Canadian Journal of Gynecology in 2016, recommended its use up to 10 weeks.

The present regulations also mean pharmacists and doctors need to take as a minimum 1 hour of a 6-hour online course before they can prescribe or allow patients to buy MTP kit - Mifepristone and Misoprostol.