Most women in the developing countries dies from pregnancy related complications because of their illiteracy level which prevents them from accessing prenatal, child birth and postnatal health care (White 2005).
Provision of safe motherhood care to the women is highly ignored as most this role is delegated to mid wives who do not take into account safe measures to observe during child birth as can be noted in the World Bank & Gender and Development Group (2003), report which indicates that about two thirds of women in developing countries give birth at the hands of mid wife while 2% to 5% of women population seek hospital health care during childbirth.
Bangladesh is among the developing countries that have initiated a step towards elimination of gender disparity in the education of girls thus improving their health and health care accorded to them. Hossain & Yousuf (2001), survey reports that in 1993 Bangladesh stipulate a new legislative of compulsory primary education and elimination of gender discrimination in the enrolment process of secondary and tertiary education levels in 2005.
Bangladesh aims at increasing gross enrolment of girls, decrease girl drop out cases and improve the basic learning competence by 2015 through the provision of food in the education centres, stipend education programs, promotion of female teachers, providing facilities to girls such as sanitary amenities and mobilizing communities towards elimination of gender disparity in the country (Hossain & Yousuf 2001). This has greatly helped the country to elevate the level of ignorance and illiteracy in the girl child which has ensured provision of improved maternal health care to the women (BANBEIS 2002).
Vulnerability of women in contracting diseases Women and girls have been an instrument to the impact of the world’s largest epidemic; AIDS especially in the Sub-Saharan African countries (Case 2001). This has been attributed to gender inequality in regards to provision of nutritious food, education and employment opportunities. World Bank (2003), statistics show that poor women who feed on low nutritional foods are the most affected by communicable, sexually transmitted, malaria and tuberculosis among other diseases.
Health care treatment accorded to women is of lower standards than that accorded to the male as the health of the male is highly regarded because they are viewed as the stamina of the economy of those countries. The study conducted by Curran et al. (2006), clearly depicts the challenges that Rwandan girls face in relation to vulnerability in contracting HIV/AIDS and other disease as they are more exposed. The study shows the girls as the care takers of AIDS victims and children left at home by their parents as they receive medical care in hospitals.
This prevents them from attending school (Curran et al. 2006). The study further blames the education environment that portrays the girls to health risks because of their delicate bodies and immune systems due to poor nutrition consumption as opposed to boys (Curran et al. 2006). The teaching strategies are also not gender sensitive as explained by Curran et al. (2006), because they tend to favour and encourage boys more than girls thus resulting to a nosedive in the motivation accorded to girls.
According to Fennell & Arnot (2007), Women who are perceived to be HIV/AIDS positive are more stigmatized by the society and family members than men. They are even locked out of the community increasing their death rates due to lack of proper health care, nutritious food and psychological stress. Therefore, by educating women their status will improve as they will be less vulnerable and thus combat the spread of HIV/AIDS, communicable diseases and malaria among other epidemics that women face (Buck 2005).