PHA-Exchange> 'Call for action' on Women's Health Initiative

[claudio at hcmc.netnam.vn]

  Women Call For Action by Sakuntala Narasimhan

  Deccan Herald , India (May 28th 2004)

  "Health sector reforms : Hazardous to women's health" says the front page 
title, on a "Call for Action" document released by a women's global network, to 
mark International Day of Action for Women's Health, observed annually on May 
28. 

  How can 'reforms' be hazardous to the health of half the population? Read on, 
and the details put out by the network   explains how -- in the name of  
globalisation policies based on neoliberal theories imposed by the World Bank 
and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), most developing countries have seen 
a worsening of women's  healthcare facilities worldwide. Privatisation of 
healthcare has meant that medical services that used to be provided free by the 
government, now have to be paid for,which in turn means that those who cannot 
afford private treatment and medicines are worse off. 

   

  Women in particular, who are known worldwide to have less access to 
healthcare compared to men , see the quality of their lives sliding. Also, when 
services get privatised, women end up having to take on a greater burden of 
nursing care for the family's sick, infirm or handicapped members. In some 
African countries, maternal mortality rates have in fact risen, in the wake 
of  "economic reforms". Even in the developed countries, women are protesting 
against increasing privatisation. (The Bush administration, for instance, is 
currently under furious fire from feminist groups, for "yanking out" and 
deleting data on women from websites meant to give information to the 
public.Medical facilities pertaining to women's reproductive rights are also 
being curtailed.The US has not even cared to ratify the international 
convention on elimination of discrimination against women ,CEDAW)  



  Over half a million women die worldwide, annually, due to complications 
related to pregnancy or childbirth. Twentyfive years after the nations of the 
world accepted the Alma Ata declaration on "Health for All by 2000", access to 
basic healthcare is still a long way off. (Article V of the Alma Ata 
Declaration says  "governments have a responsibility for the provision of 
adequate health and social measures") Ten years after the landmark 
international population conference at Cairo adopted a plan that recognised 
women's right to reproductive health, we still see reports of the kind that hit 
the headlines four months ago, revealing that 790 healthy women  in Bengal 
state were "illegally administered the antibiotic erythromycin to test whether 
it would work as a contraceptive". Erythromycin is normally taken orally to 
treat respiratory tract infections, yet the women were administered  the drug 
as a trans-cervical contraceptive. 

   

  The latest newsletter of the Women's Global Network for Reproductive Rights 
(WGNRR) points out that the two doctors involved in the erythromycin-as-
contraceptive trials were "repeat offenders" and had been involved in the 
illegal trials with the drug quinacrine used on women for chemical 
sterilisation. (Quinacrine was banned in India following a Supreme Court 
directive.)



  This year's Call for Action from WGNRR for May 28th comes in the middle of a 
three-year initiative that this coalition of  women's groups from around the 
world has  undertaken in collaboration with the international People's Health 
Movement (PHM) for demanding better access to healthcare for women.

  The Call for Action lists initiatives that local communities and activists 
can take up, to promote equity in women's access to health services. "Demand 
that governments stop the promotion of unsafe contraceptives and sterilisation 
methods," the document suggests. "Urge the government ,through your elected 
representatives and legislators, to  increase the budgetary allocation for 
basic health services" is another suggestion. Primary health centres in 
thousands of Indian villages remain useless, with no medicines or doctors or 
even paramedical staff, while hundreds of crores of rupees get allocated for 
fancy super-speciality hospitals or IT parks that cater only  to the elite, 
urban  minority population. (In Hombegowda Nagar slum  in south Bangalore, for 
example, the residents' public toilet was demolished, and treatment for the 
poor at the nearby government hospital turned from a free to a  payable 
service, while a spanking private hospital has quickly come up, just next door 
to the slum). 



  Other suggestions for concerned citizens include signing up for campaings as 
supporters, demanding more gender-sensitive health policies, and building civil 
society alliances with  youth groups, journalists, and parliamentarians, to 
press for the implementation of the promises made under the Alma Ata 
declaration on 'Health for All".

   

  In the time it took you to read this, six women would have died of pregnancy 
related causes, women whose lives could have been saved if women's health 
enjoyed better priority in the minds of the policy-makers. Forty four per cent 
of deliveries in India still take place without  a trained midwife in 
attendance, 80 percent of pregnant women in India suffer from anemia (the 
highest percentage in the world) and malnutrition and botched abortions by 
quacks continue to kill thousands of  female. As the People's Health Movement 
points out, social justice rather than commercial profits, should be the 
criterion, but globalisation emphasises the latter, at the cost of  equity and 
fairness.Pharmaceutical companies , driven by profit motives, invest millions 
in investing costly cures for rare maladies rather than making affordable 
medication available for more pervasive, preventable diseases. Signatories to 
this year's Call for Action include women's groups from USA, India, UK, 
Netherlands, Uganda, the Philippines, and Cameroon, while activists from 
countries like Australia, Switzerland and Hungary have pitched in with reports 
on women's health issues that need attention in their respective regions.
  (More information can be found at 
  www.wgnrr.org (Netherlands)
  www.wahc at wgnrr.nl
  www.phmovement.org 
  www.awid.org
  www.arrow.org.my  (Malaysia)


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