An empirical study on oral contraceptive pills in Moradabad region

Oral Contraceptive pills (OCPs) are medications taken by mouth for the purpose of birth control. They consist of one or more synthetic female sex hormones (estrogen and progestin or progestin only) that prevent pregnancy by blocking the normal process of ovulation. Centchroman is a nonhormonal oral birth control pill developed that is available in India marketed under the brand Saheli. A market survey was done among the gynecologists and the drug market of Moradabad region on the use of OCPs. Parameters selected were the success rate of OCPs over other contraceptive methods, preferred hormonal combination used by OCP manufacturing units and the preferred active ingredient and brands of emergency OCPs used. It was found that OCPs were the most effective contraceptives than any other method of contraception with very low side effect profile and additional advantage of preventing various types of cancers in women. Pharmaceutical companies prefer cyproterone acetate and ethinylestradiol combination in their combined OCPs as these both hormones together work better in preventing pregnancy. Most of the emergency OCPs contained levonorgestrel as the active ingredient. Among them i-pill (Piramal Life Science) was the most used emergency OCP brand.