Abstract This research paper deals with women’s health promotion in general and their cervical cancer due to HPV in particular. It has been found by the U. N. sponsored reports all women related health issued are still male centric and do not treat women as a separate entity for research purposes. The latest Bangkok conference in 2005 repeated the concerns of the 1995 reports submitted for Beijjing conference on women’s health promotions. This only showed continued indifference towards women even at the highest levels.
It would paradoxical that even women decision makers also happen to ignore this dichotomy . because it is not they who are highly placed will suffer but the less privileged women all over the world. About the HPV the cause of Cervical Cancer is found to be a slow killer. It attacks at later ages in women after lying dormant in the early ages. A new vaccine Gardasil has been introduced in June 2006 which claims to prevent the HPV infection if taken before sex debut.
As more and more women are contracting Cervical cancer by passage of each year, discovery of vaccine alone will not prevent the disease of epidemic proportions. Thorough and clean sex habits and regular screening from the early ages alone will help reduce the burden of the disease. Women’s Health Promotion This paper intends to make a preliminary enquiry into women’s health issue in general and the disease caused by Human Papillomavirus (HPV) and its prevention in particular as part of women’s health promotion.
Women’s health all over the world depends on the local conditions such as poverty and health systems in place. In some cases regardless of poverty, women’s health is at stake due to other conditions by neglect as an offshoot of abundance of wealth such as obesity, alcoholism, drug addiction, sexual habits of women and their life partners. Women’s health promotion came into focus by the world bodies pursuant to WHO’s declaration of Health for all by 2000 in 1985. At that time exclusive data on women’s health issues were not available.
Most of the researches on cardiovascular diseases and epidemiological studies were based on male participants. As efficacy of drugs for diseases relevant to women were not available as part of clinical trials, use of such drugs for women’s diseases was based on studies conducted on males patients without any modification due to gender differences. (Mongella 1995). The WHO and the Fourth World Conference on Women ( FWCW) held in Beijjing in 1985 proposed to view women’s health problems from women’s point of view because same diseases attack males and females uniquely and some affect more women than men.
They also sought to have focus on the women’s entire life cycle since the adverse effects are carried over to their subsequent generations. Women’s health issues would also ignore national boundaries and were sought to be addressed globally for arriving at solutions at feasible costs. Poverty is said to be affecting 1 million people on a global level and most of them are women. They are not only subjected to poverty but also domestic violence, racial discrimination as they have no independent income and lack in decision making power which have impacted on their well being.
Domestic violence and rape have contributed to female mortality and morbidity. It has been reported that in developed nations, more injuries to women are caused due to assaults than accidents and rape. Women have more health risks than men due to their reproductive systems’ vulnerability to diseases. Reproductive systems related diseases affect women all over the world and more seriously in third world countries. One such disease is AIDS caused by HIV. It is reported that every minute of the day two women are affected by HIV and every two minutes a woman dies of AIDS.
Women are more prone to infection as rate of transmission from man to woman is 2 to 10 times faster than from woman to man. As on 2000, women affected by HIV in the world were 13 million. Another disease of concern affecting females is cancer in all forms. Cervical cancer is the most widely prevalent form of cancer in developing countries and the second largest incidence of cancer affecting women in general. 450,000 new cases are reported every year and if unreported cases are taken into account, the figure would double to 900,000.
Of these cases, 300,000 women die every year due to cervical cancer. An early detection is crucial to reduction of mortality rates as in breast cancer which has been the most prevalent form of cancer in North America, Europe and Latin America overtaking cervical cancer. Another aspect of concern is that though women live longer than men, their quality of life and living with diseases leaves much to be desired. One reason for longer life is longer period of morbidity.
It has been reported that women over the age of 65 will be about 600 million by 2015 as against 330 million in 1990. The elderly women will suffer from old age diseases such as osteoporosis, dementia, poor nutrition and seclusion. (Mongella 1995) The gender bias called gender blindness is still an issue globally as voiced by the report of Health Promotion International on the 6th Global Conference on Health Promotion, held at Bangkok in August 2005. (Ostlin et al 2006) Denton et al characterize women as our main health care providers at home as well in hospitals.
They are also in need of more health care but they remain mostly neglected because all the health care systems treat males as a standard patient. This attitude must change for more focused approach to women’s health care. (Denton et al) As cervical cancer is affecting highest in most parts of the world and it is also second next only to Breast Cancer, it is proposed to study prevalence of the disease and its epidemiology. Cervical cancer As stated above, cervical cancer is most prevalent of all forms cancer affecting women in developing countries.
Although screening of women by visual inspection with Acetic Acid and a second option of HPV DNA detection test is within the easy of women, they do not present themselves for screening early. They rather come late resulting in very low possibility of cure. They are not also willing to submit themselves to screening due to lack of knowledge and lesser priority for their health in their local communities. Developing countries need to have more resources and skills at their disposal to tackle this burgeoning problem. (AC Ansink 2007)