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NEW YORK, Sep 29 (IPS) – Gender-responsive common well being protection (UHC) has the confirmed potential to remodel the well being and lives of billions of individuals, significantly women and girls, in all their intersecting identities. At tomorrow’s kick-off to the 2023 UN Excessive-Degree Assembly (HLM) on UHC, Member States and stakeholders will overview progress made on the 2019 HLM’s commitments and set a roadmap to attain UHC by 2030. We, because the co-convening organizations of the Alliance for Gender Equality and UHC, name on Member States to safeguard gender equality and sexual and reproductive well being and rights (SRHR) as a part of UHC implementation, particularly in gentle of the gendered impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
To maneuver ahead, it’s essential to recollect our cumulative previous guarantees. In 2019, Member States adopted a Political Declaration that contained sturdy commitments to make sure common entry to SRHR, together with household planning; mainstreaming a gender perspective throughout well being methods; and rising the significant illustration, engagement, and empowerment of all girls within the well being workforce. Additional, 58 international locations put ahead a joint statement that argued that investing in SRHR is inexpensive, cost-saving, and integral for UHC. These commitments have been the results of the advocacy and arduous work of civil society organizations, together with members of the Alliance for Gender Equality and UHC, and set out a transparent path on the steps wanted to make gender-responsive UHC a actuality.
Nonetheless, following the 2019 HLM, the lethal and devastating COVID-19 pandemic drastically modified how people across the globe may entry important well being companies. Basic human rights, together with hard-won beneficial properties made for UHC, SRHR, and gender equality, at the moment are in danger as well being and social companies are strained and political consideration is diverted. The protracted pandemic underscores how gender-responsive UHC is extra essential than ever.
We name on Member States to resume the commitments made in 2019 and affirm that delivering on the promise of well being for all is just doable by means of gender-responsive UHC.
To really ship gender-responsive UHC, we provide the next 5 suggestions:
1. Design insurance policies and applications with an intersectional lens that locations SRHR and women and girls — in all their range — on the middle of UHC design and implementation. To be efficient, UHC should acknowledge and reply to the wants of girls in all their intersecting identities, together with by explicitly addressing the methods wherein race, ethnicity, age, capability, migrant standing, gender identification, sexual orientation, class, and caste multiply danger and influence well being outcomes. What’s extra, COVID-19 has deepened inequalities for marginalized populations, and particular consideration is required, now greater than ever, to ship UHC for these pushed furthest behind.
2. Guarantee UHC consists of complete SRH companies, and supply entry to SRH companies for all people all through the life course. These companies have to be freed from stigma, discrimination, coercion, and violence, they usually have to be built-in, prime quality, inexpensive, accessible, and acceptable. The World Well being Group (WHO) offers steerage in the UHC Compendium of interventions and supporting paperwork for what this may appear to be. The pandemic has given method to a number of interruptions to SRHR care. For instance, an estimated 12 million women may have been unable to access family planning services due to the pandemic. COVID-19 response and restoration and UHC implementation should tackle these points.
3. Prioritize, gather, and make the most of disaggregated knowledge, particularly gender-disaggregated knowledge. UHC coverage and planning can solely be gender-responsive when knowledgeable by knowledge which can be disaggregated by gender and different social traits. Within the present pandemic, not all international locations are reporting disaggregated knowledge on infections and mortality from COVID-19 to the WHO, and most international locations haven’t applied a gendered coverage response. In June 2021, solely 50% of 199 international locations reported knowledge disaggregated by intercourse on COVID-19 infections and/or deaths within the earlier month.1 The variety of international locations reporting sex-disaggregated statistics has additionally decreased over the course of the pandemic. With out this data, decision-makers are unable to base insurance policies on proof affirming find out how to tackle the well being wants of all genders — a vital lesson for UHC.
4. Foster gender equality within the well being and care workforce and catalyze girls’s management. The strategy to the well being and care workforce within the pandemic has steadily not utilized a gender lens, ignoring the truth that girls are 70% of the worldwide well being workforce and highly effective drivers of well being companies. Gender inequities within the well being workforce have been current lengthy earlier than the pandemic, with the vast majority of feminine well being employees in lower-status, low-paid roles and sectors, typically in insecure circumstances and going through harassment frequently. Furthermore, though girls have performed a vital function within the pandemic response — from vaccine design to well being service supply — they’ve been marginalized in management on pandemic decision-making from parliamentary to neighborhood ranges. The truth is, 85% of national COVID-19 task forces have majority male membership. Pressing funding in secure, respectable, and equal work for ladies well being employees, in addition to equal footing for ladies in management and decision-making roles, have to be central to the supply of UHC.
5. Again commitments to advancing SRHR, gender equality, and civil society engagement in UHC design and implementation with needed funding and accountability. Now’s the time to spend money on well being and the care economic system, significantly in UHC. Governments all over the place are going through fiscal constraints from the pandemic. UHC is a vital a part of investing in and constructing again resilient well being and social methods to keep away from catastrophic spending on future pandemics and international well being emergencies. UHC have to be designed deliberately, with applicable accountability mechanisms, to scale back inequalities between and inside international locations — and particularly gender inequality, which undermines social and financial rights and resilience.
We, together with our civil society companions within the Alliance for Gender Equality and UHC, stand able to work hand-in-hand with governments, the UN, and all stakeholders to behave on these suggestions on the highway to the 2023 HLM on UHC. At this level within the COVID-19 pandemic, there is no such thing as a time to waste in making the promise of well being for all a actuality, and this may solely be achieved by way of gender-responsive UHC that facilities gender equality and SRHR.
The authors are Ann Keeling of Women in Global Health, Divya Mathew of Women Deliver, Deepa Venkatachalam of Sama Resource Group for Women and Health, and Chantal Umuhoza of Spectra Rwanda. These 4 organizations are the co-conveners of the Alliance for Gender Equality and Universal Health Coverage.
1Global Health 50/50 (globalhealth5050.org)
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© Inter Press Service (2021) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service
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