Until recently, women’s health meant maternal and child health, including family planning, issues that have been studied and debated for ages. However, women’s health involves a variety of gender-specific issues, like estrogen production, menstrual cycle and menopause, pelvic floor disorders, gynecologic benign and malign tumors, cysts, fibroids, mental health, sexual health and fertility concerns.
Even though, modern medicine have advanced in diagnosis and treatment of many previously fatal diseases, and widespread use of technology, there is still a long way to go in enhancing equal access to healthcare for women, especially, in less developed countries.
Women clearly suffer from a lack of reproductive rights worldwide. They lack the right to knowledge and control over their own reproduction. This deprivation begins with the lack of education and empowerment and it continues through adolescence and womanhood. Women’s control over their own reproductive lives can mean control over their own destinies.
WHO report from 2020 states that there were 287.000 maternal deaths globally. That is the equivalent of a woman dying every two minutes- or nearly 800 deaths a day.
The same social structures that limit access to contraception also deny women the right to knowledge and treatment of sexually transmitted infections, which are, along with the violence against women, one of the two leading causes of female morbidity.
More than 1 million STIs are acquired every day. In 2020, WHO estimated 374 million new infections with 1 of 4 STIs: chlamydia, gonorrhoea, syphilis and trichomoniasis.
Currently, the predominant contributors to STD-related mortality among reproductive
aged women are HIV and HPV related genital cancers.
However, maternal morbidity and STD-related deaths are preventable. It is a question of how much women, mothers are worth…