A once-a-month birth control pill has proven effective on pigs, and it is now ready for human trials. If the pill works, then it will save many women from unwanted pregnancies. They will only have to worry about taking the pill once every menstrual cycle!

The current daily contraceptive pill is one of the most popular and most effective methods on the market. When used correctly, the 21-day or 28-day pill pack will almost for certain prevent pregnancies; fewer than one in every hundred women using the pill will get pregnant in a year. The only reason the pill is said to be 91% effective is that women often forget to take their daily dose.

Researchers at MIT have created a breakthrough once-a-month contraceptive pill, and it has proven to be effective on pigs. The capsule is star-shaped, and it is designed to get lodged somewhere in the stomach. Each arm and the centre are coated in gelatin made from two types of polyurethane so that it can remain in the stomach without dissolving quickly. As the acids slowly break down the capsule, hormones are released to prevent pregnancy. After three or four weeks, the pill itself will dissolve, and it will exit the body through the digestive tract.

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Scientists hope that this pill will help prevent more unwanted pregnancies. They are aware that while the current methods are effective, there is a lot of room for improvement. Especially for birth control pills, current contraception methods have a level of invasiveness. One has to think about the pill every day and force it into the routine. Researchers wanted to get rid of this issue to encourage more women to use contraceptives. The only thing that women should consider when choosing to take birth control is whether or not they want to get pregnant and not the level of convenience of the contraceptive method.

Thanks to the Bill Gates Foundation, the new contraceptive pill is almost ready for the public. Further research still needs to be conducted on people, but the scientists working on it predict that human trials will be done in three to five years. Their invention is going to save many women, and we can’t wait to see its efficacy in the next stages of testing.