HWN

Yet, between 1987 and 2011, maternal mortality in the United States rose from 7.2 to 17.8 deaths per 100,000 live births, this is reflected in the Maternal Mortality Ratio . By contrast rates as high as 1,000 per birth are reported in the rest of the world, with the highest rates in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, which account for 86{06e5c851e71f046c386a74248b3a53282284dae0fc18af42c313779a50d46a39} of such deaths. In these resource-poor countries, maternal health is further eroded by poverty and adverse economic factors which impact the roads, health care facilities, equipment and supplies in addition to limited skilled personnel. Other problems include cultural attitudes towards sexuality, contraception, child marriage, home birth and the ability to recognise medical emergencies. The direct causes of these maternal deaths are hemorrhage, eclampsia, obstructed labor, sepsis and unskilled abortion.
In 2013 about 289,000 women in the world died due to pregnancy-related causes, with large differences between developed and developing countries. Maternal mortality in western nations had been steadily falling, and forms the subject of annual reports and reviews.
However it was later criticised for not including violence as an explicit target, the “missing target”. In the evaluation of MDG 3, violence remained a major barrier to achieving the goals.
cases 5–8 for more information in dealing with respiratory problems post surgery. Depending on the type of gynaecological surgery the woman has had, the physiotherapist may progress post-operative intervention to teaching pelvic floor muscle exercises, abdominal muscle exercises and advising on posture and back care. The physiotherapist may also have to help the patient deal with the psychological reactions they may have to their surgery.
Vaginal issues could also indicate serious problems such as sexually transmitted diseases or reproductive tract cancer. While care providers might treat mild infections easily, if left unchecked, they can lead to conditions such as infertility or kidney failure. A young girl from Tondo, Manila, is seen in a Likhaan clinic for her free HPV vaccination. Likhaan provides reproductive healthcare services for low income families in the Philippines, where there remains a gap in women’s awareness of their reproductive rights. Over 90 per cent of children living with HIV are infected from their mothers during pregnancy, birth, or breastfeeding.
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death amongst women, but while the number of women enrolled in lung cancer studies is increasing, they are still far less likely to be enrolled than men. Changes in the way research ethics was visualised in the wake of the Nuremberg Trials , led to an atmosphere of protectionism of groups deemed to be vulnerable that was often legislated or regulated. This resulted in the relative underrepresentation of women in clinical trials. In practice this ban was often applied very widely to exclude all women. Women, at least those in the child-bearing years, were also deemed unsuitable research subjects due to their fluctuating hormonal levels during the menstrual cycle.
Treating continence problems requires specialised post-graduate training and, therefore, students and junior members of staff are not usually as involved with this aspect of women’s health other than in an observatory capacity. These challenges are included in the goals of the Office of Research on Women’s Health, in the United States, as is the goal of facilitating women’s access to careers in biomedicine. This goal acknowledges the glass ceiling that women face in careers in science and in obtaining resources from grant funding to salaries and laboratory space. Breast cancer is the second most common cancer in the world and the most common among women. It is also among the ten most common chronic diseases of women, and a substantial contributor to loss of quality of life .

However, research has demonstrated significant biological differences between the sexes in rates of susceptibility, symptoms and response to treatment in many major areas of health, including heart disease and some cancers. These exclusions pose a threat to the application of evidence-based medicine to women, and compromise to care offered to both women and men. One of the Millennium Goals was the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women, which sought to eliminate all forms of violence against women as well as implementing CEDAW. This recognised that eliminating violence, including discrimination was a prerequisite to achieving all other goals of improving women’s health.