C O L U M N S

GENEVA: Women are often deprived of health care in the crucial years of adolescence and old age due to social inequalities and neglect in male dominated decision-making, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Monday.

“It’s time to pay girls and women back, to make sure that they get the care and support they need to enjoy a fundamental human right at every moment of their lives, that is their right to health,” said WHO Director General Margaret Chan.

In its first ever cradle-to-grave report on “Women and Health”, the UN health agency underlined that women were particularly vulnerable to a lack of adequate care in old age — when they often outlive men — and in their teens.

It also underlined that the lack of responsiveness to women’s inherent health needs can be lethal, such as with complications in pregnancy and child birth or cervical cancer. “This points to another problem, the failure of health services to meet women’s needs,” Chan told WHO member states.

As a result, women provide the bulk of care — about 80 per cent —- as health staff or household careers, yet the system fails to address their own needs adequately, the WHO said.