Reviewer’s report
Title: 
Barriers to seeking post-abortion care in Paktika Province, Afghanistan: a
qualitative study of clients and community members
Version: 
0 
Date: 
13 Jul 2020
Reviewer's report:
This paper deals with a somehow neglected issue that is barriers to access and
use post abortion care (PAC) services and community perceptions around PAC
and induced abortion. 
Although the scope of the paper is not broad (10 IDIs and 8 FGDs) and
obviously it is not an anthropological piece of work as the more behavioral
aspects of that community are not addressed in-depth (e.g. gender roles, issues
related to masculinity in that context, ), it still provides interesting insights on
barriers to PAC in Afghanistan. The paper is well referenced, the discussion
interesting and well written, and it deserves being published. 
Compulsory revisions
Abstract: 
1) The background section is quite long compared to the results section : please
shorten the background section and provide more insights or concrete results.
2) Methods: …add numbers for FGDs; " and eight focus group discussions
(FGDs) were conducted with 40 married women and 40 married men aged…
3) Conclusions: Barriers to PAC are dependent on health facility characteristics :
not sure it is clear for the reader what you mean: reformulate? 
"Many of these barriers can be overcome or improved upon through structural
interventions and community mobilization efforts to shift social norms around
women's movement, respectful care, and stigma and shame around abortion."
This statement does not come from your finding and even if it is somehow
linked to your discussion points, these points are not addressed in the abstract. 
The abstract needs to stand alone. Please nuance the statement for instance :
"Structural interventions and community mobilization efforts to shift social
norms around women's movement, respectful care, and stigma and shame around
abortion are potential interventions to overcome these barriers" ?
Introduction
4) Page 3 line 53-54: "PAC is a package of interventions": Please provide briefly
what are these interventions? (5 different components of PAC for those who are
not familiar with it) 
5) Page 2 line 39: what do you mean by maternal mortality indicators that differ
from an area to another? Please specify.
Methods- 
Page 6 lines 129-132: Data analysis
6) "When discrepancies arose, they were discussed and resolved until the inter-
rater agreement was in the 80th percentile range". This seems a bit odd in
qualitative data analysis : could you explain and provide a reference? 
"After coding was completed, data were compiled and interpreted and quotes
were extracted to substantiate the main themes highlighted"
Please expand and specify what "highlighted" means: 
whether thematic analysis
was used; it seems to be inductive analysis 
or was a theoretical framework of
access to care was used to guide the elaboration of the main themes.
Discretionary revisions:
Table 1: Please present data in a standard table format: (Two columns (not 2 x
table with 2 columns) , with characteristics, N, and add married (10).
Many quotes: A few of them could be removed when they don't bring a added
value to the text explaining.
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