Gender bias in health care is making women and girls more likely to succumb to a variety of diseases, researchers at an international health conference said Wednesday.
Delegates to the Global Forum for Health Research meeting in the Tanzanian town of Arusha heard from researchers that males are getting more and better health treatment because of discrimination.
Girls in India are sent to hospital less often than boys for acute medical illnesses, said paediatrician Shally Awasthi, a professor at King George Medical College.
Studies in the Indian provinces of Punjab and Uttar Pradesh ”showed that during the first two years of life, expenditure for health care is two to three times higher for sons than for daughters,” Awasthi told the gathering.
Girls in Egypt have higher levels of infant and childhood mortality than boys, reported Shafika Nasser of the University of Cairo medical school.
”Despite widespread primary health care facilities, girls seem to have less opportunity for proper care and for survival,” Nasser said. ”Defective nutrition, early deprivation and non-compliance with treatment seem to be behind these results.”
Women are more likely than men to go blind from cataracts because they are not undergoing surgery as often, said Paul Courtright of the Kilimanjaro Centre for Community Ophthalmology in Tanzania.
”Closing the gap between the sexes could significantly decrease cataract blindness,”
Courtright said.
Other researchers told the gathering that the level of care for AIDS patients differs between men and women, while women are dying at higher rates from tobacco-related diseases.
The forum is bringing together some 700 public-health
specialists from across the globe for a four-day meeting looking at the imbalance in health research favouring richer countries.
Delegates say the public and private sectors spend more than $70-billion annually on health research worldwide, but only 10% of the money goes to the health problems affecting 90% of the world. – Sapa-DPA