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Women and Child Health
Unless all concerned – policy makers, civil society, communities and
families and all of us – contribute in our own different ways maternal health
would continue to be compromised and the human rights of women would continue
to be a casualty
By the time one finishes
reading this article, several women would have died of pregnancy related preventable
causes in India! Official figures suggest one unfortunate Indian woman loses her life every eight minutes,
which adds up to a loss of more than 63,000 young and productive lives every year.
All of us would agree that there can be no improvement in maternal health
without eradicating extreme poverty and hunger to which women, in general, and pregnant
mothers, in particular, are most vulnerable. Improved maternal health will, on
its own, bring about a visible improvement in child survival and child health also.
I use the term “maternal health”
in its broadest sense as the culmination
of all that goes wrong with women generally and those from the poorer sections,
in particular – beginning with the discrimination from the embryonic stage when
detection of a female foetus leads to its elimination or termination; and if it
survives, the tragedy of the infant girl whose mortality rate is higher than
that of infant boys; and growing up to face the neglect as a girl child who has
to shoulder adult like responsibilities at the cost of her schooling and foregoing
exposure to her there entitlements in comparison to male siblings; and then is
confronted with the travails of vulnerable adolescence as she has no access to
basic sanitation facilities or even a sanitary napkin or its crude substitutes
become a luxury; and then she grows to assume young adulthood when sexual
health is not considered a priority for her in the reproductive age, deprived
as she is of sufficient nutrition, preventive health care, and denied the right to choose the timing of
conception or the power to decide on which method of contraceptive to use; and
then she is forced to double up as a provider of livelihood for the family; and finally, in her old age she is discarded and thrown out to beg and survive.
