Footnotes

• Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

• Competing interests The author has worked for over 20 years with HRA Pharma, the French company that is launching the desogestrel progestogen-only pill (Hana). In 2007 at the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) seminar the author was told that no agency/organisation could make an application for oral contraception over the counter, it could only come from a pharmaceutical company. The author is proud to have worked with a company that is at last willing to take the risk and make the effort to get approval.

• Patient and public involvement Patients and/or the public were not involved in the design, or conduct, or reporting, or dissemination plans of this research.

• Provenance and peer review Commissioned; internally peer reviewed.