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Women who travel abroad have to deal with a range of issues that most men dont have to consider, like where to buy tampons or whether or not the morning after pill is available in specific countries. And any woman whos moved abroad can tell you that finding a gynecologist in another country is not always as easy as it should be.

Its from these kinds of challenges that Lani Fried came up with the idea for Gynopedia, the new Wikipedia of womens reproductive and sexual health.

Gynopedia, launched in September 2016, is an open-source health care database that includes information on womens health around the world. Specifically,the sitecurrently covers 67 cities in 48 countries on four continents, but Fried wants to have a Gynopedia page for as many cities as possible.

Each page contains information on a country or city and covers critical topics like contraception, STDs, medication and vaccines and menstruation. These topics are broken down into subsections about laws and stigmas, where to find what you need and how much it costs.

For example, if youre traveling Sri Lanka and your birth control is lost or stolen, you can visit the countrys Gynopedia page and discover that birth control is available at pharmacies without a prescription.

Or maybe you just moved to Chicago and need information about abortion laws and costs. You dont have to sift through sources and waste your time. Now, you can just go straight to the abortion section on theChicago pageto find a list womens health clinics and an idea of average costs.

Lets say you need a low-cost clinic in New York, or an LGBT-friendly gynecologist in Bangkok, or the morning after pill in Lima. Well, Gynopedia is the resource for you, asserts the Gynopedia homepage.

The idea for the site was more or less born of necessity. Fried was living in New York and planning a long trip through Asia.

I suddenly realized that I was completely clueless on how I would deal with things like birth control in the dozen countries I would visit, if I had the need to, she told Broadly. Or a pap smear. Or any access to sexual health care.

Fried started with the New York page and then expanded to include the larger destinations she was visiting in Southeast Asia.

Its crazy to me how you can find a gazillion sites on the top ten things to do or see when you visit a new place, but nothing about critical aspects of every womans life, she says. I want Gynopedia to change that.

Fried began contacting local womens health organizations to make connections and gather more information. One of the first respondents was the Asia Safe Abortion Partnership (ASAP), an organization which advocates for womens safe access to abortion throughout Asia. They were able to connect Fried with organizations in countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

While such a resource is invaluable for women traveling or living abroad, it could also help women living in the U.S. to navigate rapidly changing reproductive lawsassuming Fried and other contributors are able to keep up.

Fried is actively seeking contributors and anyone who wants to create a page on Gynopedia can check out theGynopedia guidelines page.

Photo Credit: Thinkstock

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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