Originally published by Jim Kim on LinkedIn: Zika outbreak reveals major impact on women
Since the Zika outbreak gained global attention earlier this year, photos of babies with microcephaly have appeared on television screens and newspapers around the world. They have become emblems of the human cost of the virus, though a causal link between Zika and the congenital birth defect is yet to be confirmed.
One thing, though, is certain: Behind each of these babies is a mother, many of them rural women living in poverty who are without adequate access to sanitation, health information, and other services. The Zika outbreak has given the world a stark reminder that women’s needs and health must be a priority in global and national prevention and response efforts.
As we celebrate International Women’s Day around the globe, we need to give special attention to gender gaps in health. They remain unacceptably large, especially for women in developing countries who, for example, account for 99 percent of global maternal deaths.
Many countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have stronger health systems than in other regions in the developing world. However, the region also has the highest rates of unplanned pregnancy in the world at 56 percent, according to a 2012 study.
The unmet need for family planning services is also high in some countries: 23.7 percent of women in Haiti, 13.9 percent in Bolivia, and 18.5 percent in Guatemala want but lack access to such services, according to surveys. And countries like El Salvador have very high teen pregnancy rates, often due to unplanned pregnancies resulting from a lack of information and access to reproductive health services.
Women in the region are also at great risk of gender-based violence: a 2012 study in 12 countries by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) found that between 17 and 53 percent of women reported experiencing physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner. This is broadly consistent with WHO estimates that about a third of women have experienced physical or sexual violence globally. While avoiding pregnancy might be a wise decision in this climate of uncertainty around Zika, that option is currently unavailable to many women who may not have freedom to say no to their partner or insist on contraception.
Other major health crises also show that women often are hurt the most. During the recent Ebola epidemic in West Africa, the impacts on women were immense, not just because of the direct impacts on their own health but also because of huge increases in their traditional caretaking responsibilities and resulting loss of income and productivity. Maternal deaths increased in the affected countries because health systems came under enormous strain: a World Bank Group study in mid-2015 estimated that maternal mortality in the worst-affected countries could skyrocket to rates not seen for a generation, due to the heavy loss of health workers from the epidemic.