This updated and expanded edition includes developments such as Gynefix, Implanon and progestogen-only emergency contraception. It also looks at issues surrounding the various methods.

Family planning could bring more benefits to more people at less cost than any other single 'technology' now available to the human race.

UNICEF

Recalling that every new birth in the UK is likely in its lifetime to do as much damage to the environment as 30-200 births in Burundi or Bangladesh will ever have the chance to do, this quote applies worldwide. So I welcome the opportunity to produce this pocketbook for general practitioners on the subject of contraception.

I write as one who is proud to have worked in general practice, as a locum in places as diverse as Barnsley, Cambridge, Luton and South London, and is hence able to appreciate some of the constraints of that role.

March 2000