Lack of Health Care Worsens Women's Life Quality: WHO

Lack of Health Care Worsens Women's Life Quality: WHO

by Laura MacInnis


GENEVA - Despite living six to eight years longer than men, women lack essential health care throughout their lives, particularly as teenagers and elderly people, the World Health Organization said on Monday.


Women are often deprived of health care in the crucial years of puberty and old age due to social inequalities with men, the World Health Organisation has said. (REUTERS/Michaela Rehle)


In a report, the WHO said that women around the world are "denied a chance to develop their full human potential" because many critical medical needs are ignored.

"Women generally live longer than men, but their lives are not necessarily healthy or happy," Margaret Chan, the head of the United Nations health agency, said at the WHO on Monday.

Though women tend to seek out medical services more often than men -- particularly before, during and after pregnancy -- they often fail to get adequate treatment to cope with violence, depression and problems related to old age, such as dementia.

"The obstacles that stand in the way of better health for women are not primarily technical or medical in nature. They are social and political," Chan said.

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http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/11/10-3