Lack of Access to Health Care Is Killing Women | Opinion

Women's health is in danger.

Did that catch your attention? Did it scare you? It should.

Everywhere from acknowledgement of health concerns and access to diagnosis and treatment, men are prioritized over women when it comes to health. Fifty-five percent of all people with vision loss are women and girls, meaning 112 million more women than men cannot see clearly. Medical research funding is significantly higher in issues facing men, and women's mortality rates are rising while their projected life expectancy drops. As summed up by a report released by the Commonwealth Fund looking at high-income countries, "U.S. women are sicker, more stressed, and die younger compared to women in other countries. This is largely because so many of them lack access to needed care."

If this is the case in the United States, a global superpower, imagine how much worse it is in nations where access is even more limited and socioeconomic and societal constructs are set up to further dismiss women's care.

How do we fix it?

First, we start listening to women. Nearly half of all women are denied bodily autonomy, including the ability to make their own decisions about their medical health. Once in the doctor's office, it continues to be a struggle. Implicit bias exists, and the faster we acknowledge that, the faster we can change it. Even in high income countries women are given lower doses of pain medication in hospitals compared to their male counterparts; they wait 16 minutes longer to be seen by medical professionals, and their concerns are often dismissed. Add to that the fact that misdiagnosis leads to $1 trillion in health care costs making health care and seeking treatment anxiety producing and cost prohibitive.

Second, we should empower women. Women in low- and middle-income countries are far more likely to seek treatment when they can go to a doctor or health care professional that is also a woman. This simple touchpoint often helps them to overcome the barrier to entry and simply walk in the door. Once there, taking a holistic approach by offering a full range of services will make them stay. On a global scale, women are more likely to put the needs of their family before their own; make clinics that offer everything: eye exams, mammograms, access to family planning, vaccinations for children. The woman is the center of the family ecosystem, and when you provide her with an opportunity to treat everyone for everything, you are also increasing the likelihood that she will seek care for herself.

Third, we make health care affordable. In many cultures, women are dependent financially on their partners or the men in their lives, be it a husband, father, or brother, and the simple act of getting medical care can be cost-prohibitive in addition to humbling. Even in countries with universal health care, we need to go a step further, offering free access to specialists like ophthalmologists, OBGYNs, and ENTs. We need to provide transportation vouchers to ensure that women can get to the doctor without financial strain, and we need to extend opening hours to accommodate their schedules. And once they're there, we need to make it easier—providing play areas for their children or locations where women can breastfeed privately are great places to start. We should eliminate as many barriers to entry as possible.

Enacting these solutions is easier said than done, but the simplest and most effective place to start is by uplifting women across governments, health care systems, and philanthropic organizations. We mimic and mirror the behavior that we see. As more and more women in high-powered positions start to demand accessible health care for all women, more women in vulnerable positions will begin to demand it for themselves. Even on a grassroots level, working within communities via door-to-door programs, like the ones we have created at Orbis, helps provide agency for women to demand access to health care. When we minimize the barriers, when we have a chorus of people speaking out, and when we have cross-collaboration in uplifting women in power and within the medical field more specifically, all women will rise.

And only then will the health crisis stop.

Dr. Doris Macharia is SVP of global programs at Orbis.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.