Close to 6,000 delegates convened in Copenhagen last week to attend the 4th Women Deliver Global Conference to help drive investments and progress, particularly in maternal, sexual, and reproductive health and rights. The focus of this year’s conference was on how to make development matter most for girls and women, with specific focus on health, rights, gender equality, education, and economic empowerment.
The concurrent session, the Female Face of Communicable Diseases, organized by The Global TB Programme of WHO, in collaboration with the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria, and UNAIDS discussed the importance of a holistic and integrated healthcare from policy to care recipient level. The session was co-moderated by Marijke Wijnroks, Chief of Staff at the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and Haileyesus Getahun, Coordinator at WHO’s Global TB Programme.
Gender inequalities continue to increase women’s risk of infectious diseases like HIV, malaria and tuberculosis. Globally, adolescent girls and young women are twice as likely to be at risk of HIV infection compared to boys and young men. This higher risk of HIV is associated with unsafe and often unwanted and forced sexual activity. Tuberculosis is a leading cause of death among women of reproductive age in low-income countries, claiming around a half a million female lives per year. During pregnancy, malaria, HIV and TB all present significant risks for the pregnant women, her fetus and the newborn child. Barriers to access health services preventing and addressing these diseases disease are inextricably linked to economic vulnerability, education, and lack of empowerment.
During the opening of the session, Yvonne Chaka Chaka, Champion for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria, highlighted how vulnerable women, particularly pregnant women, were to communicable diseases such as TB and HIV. She pointed out that in many cases women who had TB or HIV were often too scared to approach the services for fear of being ostracized by their communities. When designing programmes to increase access to services for communicable diseases stigma needs to be addressed. Massimo Ghidinelli of WHO/PAHO presented on the opportunities presented in mother and child health care for expanding access to communicable diseases such as HIV, syphilis, TB, malaria and Chagas disease. He also pointed out that indicators on access to services for communicable diseases can be important quality markers for MNCH services. Maximina Jokonya, Women Deliver Youth Leader and peer counselor for Africaid-Zvandiri, raised the importance of adolescent friendly services, reiterating the need to listen to young people who are infected and affected by HIV and TB when tailoring successful programmes to the needs of adolescents. She also pointed out the role of peer support to ensure that adolescent girls adhere to treatment and empowerment to help them go about everyday activities, including going to school.
Kaosar Afsana presented on the work of development organization, BRAC, in poverty alleviation and community empowerment in Bangladesh through a workforce of some 100,000 female foot soldiers and frontline workers. Selected from the communities, these women play a critical role in expanding the health system to the very communities they come from and in increasing access to TB prevention, diagnosis and treatment by providing services at the grass roots level. Catrin Schulte-Hillen of Médecins Sans Frontières, Switzerland presented on the devastating impact of epidemics such as Ebola and cholera where both mother and child are at extreme risk of mortality. Referral centres with obstetric expertise were highlighted as a key consideration as part of the epidemic response for affected pregnant women. In addition, she pointed out that midwives are an untapped opportunity for integrating any infectious disease service within care for pregnant women and that their capacity needs to be developed on this front to enable appropriate task shifting. Koki Agarwal, director of USAID's flagship award for maternal and Child Health - Maternal and Child Survival Program, presented on increasing access to malaria prevention, diagnosis and treatment through antenatal care, giving country examples from Kenya and Ghana. She concluded that the provision of intermittent preventive treatment in pregnancy, insecticide treated nets and prompt diagnosis and effective treatment are essential for improving maternal and newborn outcomes. Support at all points of care; from community level, to service delivery and national policy level are all crucial to improving access to these services.