By: Dale Hanson Bourke
“Ladies first,” is a common phrase in the US, but in many parts of the world, women come last—dead last. In many poor countries their rate of disease and mortality exceeds men from an early age. While some of this is due to complications from childbirth, women’s health needs in general are simply neglected by themselves, their families and their culture in under-resourced countries.
This week women will have a new advocate at the UN with the naming of former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet to head the recently formed UN Women. In addition, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is making women and girls health “the very core of our final push” for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) during the UN General Assembly.
One of the groups to be cited at the General Assembly is the Center for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia (CIDRZ) which has now tested and treated 1 million pregnant women in order to prevent mother to child transmission of HIV/AIDS (PMTCT). The CIDRZ program now includes more comprehensive health services for women, including the largest cervical cancer screening and treatment program in the world.
Because the organization grew at such a fast pace, services and facilities and are spread across Lusaka. But now a central campus is being established to not only consolidate research and treatment, but also to provide training for health care providers around the world. We are calling this the Center of Excellence for Women’s Health in Africa. The title seemed a bit audacious at first until we learned that there was no center of excellence for women’s health in all of Africa. Then we realized the importance of being part of the effort to bring attention to women’s health worldwide.
The CIDRZ campus will treat men as well, but the emphasis will be on women, not only in research, testing and treatment, but also in teaching them to care for themselves and their children and prevent diseases from occurring. We will continue to help women living with HIV/AIDS to learn skills that will help them make a decent wage and we will train even the youngest children about health messages through our puppet programs and other pediatric interventions. But mostly, we will train health care workers from around the world about the importance of women’s health.
What CIDRZ and other organizations are doing is simply a start. Women also need cultural support, the kind that comes from their governments, civic leaders and religious communities. Women need to be valued. That’s why it is so important that the UN has taken these steps and why each of us needs to support organizations that specifically value women.
Dale Hanson Bourke is president of the CIDRZ Foundation and author of “The Skeptic’s Guide to the Global AIDS Crisis” and “The Skeptic’s Guide to Global Poverty.”
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