International women’s day: fighting for the right to health care while facing COVID-19

March 8 was chosen to celebrate International Women’s Day, a date to honor worldwide all the amazing achievements women have attained and never lose sight of the many battles that still remain. The COVID-19 pandemic, however, may present a threat to many of such hard-earned achievements. The social, economical, mental, and physical adverse effects of the pandemic may hit women harder than men and thus increase gender inequality (Chen and Bougie 2020).

Studies show that women are more vulnerable than men when infectious diseases outbreaks occur as seen when zika and ebola hit different regions of the world (Wenham et al. 2020).In addition to the health challenges, women are faced with increased workload as schools and childcare centers closed and the office moved home. Women were forced to take over a huge load of invisible unpaid work and their burden greatly increased (Power 2020). The physical and mental impact on women is unprecedented and cannot be ignored.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO 2021a), women face more difficulty in having access to healthcare due to a number of reasons including reduced educational and employment opportunities, cultural and social norms which make women focus on reproductive roles and exposure to situations that may pose psychological, physical or sexual threats. The pandemic unfortunately has worsened the situation, made women more vulnerable and the gender gap wider.

Discontinuation of essential health care has come as part of the radical transformation of healthcare provision to allow for the much-needed reallocation of personnel and resources to combat the COVID-19 pandemic (Blumenthal et al., 2020). The impact of such discontinuation will be certainly felt in the years to come. The pandemic has brought attention to the various problems provision of adequate health care faces worldwide. Social and economical problems also became more evident as well as gender inequality (Chen and Bougie 2020). It goes without saying that maternal, sexual, reproductive, women’s and girls’ health need special attention from governments and healthcare agencies as low-income populations and minorities are expected to take the hardest blow in a scenario of limited resources.

Cancer screening and treatment also raise concerns as missing cancer screening or having access to adequate treatment should have ominous effects in the long run. Oncological treatments and surgeries were delayed because resources were concentrated on the care of COVID-19 patients. Once again, low-income populations and minorities, which include many women and their children, are the most affected (Cancino et al. 2020; Richards et al. 2020).

Provision of reproductive health care including contraception, prevention of sexually transmitted diseases, and prenatal care is another area of concern. As the pandemic grew, people stayed home and many “nonessential” consultations were canceled and human and financial resources were harnessed to fight covid19 infection. Thus, many reproductive-age women were left without access to safe contraception and prenatal care (Thorne et al. 2020). This may result in an increased rate of unplanned pregnancies, maternal and infant mortality as access to contraception and family planning are reduced. Providing contraception can be lifesaving as according to the WHO in 2017, (World Health Organization, 2021b) about 808 women died every day due to complications of pregnancy and delivery. The majority of those deaths were avoidable and occurred in low-resource settings. Moreover, access to contraception empowers women to make informed decisions about their reproductive future, decreases unintended pregnancies, and may deeply affect women and their families in terms of well-being and health (Nanda et al. 2020). Therefore, there is an urgent need to make reproductive care essential and ensure every woman has access to the provision of contraception and prenatal care with an emphasis on the most vulnerable populations. Available options to allow continuity of care include the use of telehealth which is not universally available yet, providing educational material to women and facilitating access to consultations and contraceptives (Green et al. 2020).

The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women and the United Nations Secretariat published in April 2020 a Policy Brief: The Impact of COVID-19 on Women (The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women and the United Nations Secretariat, 2021). The document discusses major points that may aggravate gender inequality including economic, health, and social effects of the pandemic on women’s lives worldwide and suggests both immediate and long-term measures to pave the way to recovery. There is a danger that all the hard-earned progress made in gender equality may be lost amidst the chaos created by COVID-19.

It has been a year since the WHO classified the COVID-19 outbreak as a pandemic. Since then, we have been living in a state of global public health emergency. COVID-19 should be taken seriously and the thousands of deaths are an extremely sad chapter in our history. We should not, however, forget women have conquered the hard way basic human and health rights that cannot be lost as we face one of the most frightful challenges in our recent history. It is about time we took steps to counteract the disruption on women's health care as it may be vital to safeguard fundamental rights to women and their families worldwide as well as pave our way to recovery to a more equal and sustainable society.