Climate Disasters ‘Block Access to Women’s Healthcare’

According to a report, climate change-related disasters intensify the vulnerabilities of women and girls, given that important health services, including family planning, get ignored amid such times.

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) report states that occurrences such as severe storms incapacitate access to sexual and reproductive health services. This results in increases in child marriage, gender-based violence, unplanned pregnancies, and the chance of maternal fatality.

” During climate emergencies, we commonly witness a disturbance of service deliveries,” claims Angela Baschieri, population dynamics adviser at the UNFPA East and Southern Africa regional office.

” Including access to health facilities for childbirth, accessibility to family planning, as well as various other life-saving interventions. These effects are particularly essential to the much less fortunate and the at-risk.”

The report reviewed crucial climate change documents referred to as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). It examined exactly how gender and health issues, including sexual and reproductive health and rights, were regarded in national climate action frameworks, plans and methods.

The analysis shows alarming gaps in countries’ national climate policies and recommends adaptation actions to respond to the repercussion of climate change on women and girls, delivering hopes of achieving good health and gender equality.

From 5 UNFPA regions – the Arab States, Asia and Pacific, Western and Central Africa, East and Southern Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean – scientists examined the NDC’s from 50 countries.

Trafficking, early and forced marriages, domestic violence, sexual harassment, sexual exploitation, sexual abuse, and rape are a few of the sorts of gender-based violence common in humanitarian emergencies, says Baschieri.

She adds that increasing drought implies women and girls journey longer distances to gather water and firewood, subjecting them to sexual and gender-based violence.

In Zimbabwe, which has suffered consecutive years of dry spells, women make up 65 percent of individuals involved in fetching water, compared to 35 percent males, according to its Nationally Determined Contributions for 2021.

Women and girls in African nations such as Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, and Uganda, now affected by climate change, typically suffer from the aggravating impact from cyclones and serious dry spells, states Baschieri.

In Mozambique, after Cyclones Idai and Kenneth in 2019, UNFPA-led evaluations showed increased risks for women and girls, including gender-based violence.

” Many women were divided from family members and community networks as well as had lost their livelihoods and support systems,” Baschieri states. “Girls that are incapacitated to join school if they are displaced, as an example, risk being married off early by parents that can no longer provide to look after them if they have lost their source of incomes.”

Baschieri advises governments across Africa to incorporate sexual and reproductive health and rights into climate-resilient health systems and disaster risk reduction plans and offer possibilities for young people.

” Climate policymakers have to take targeted and daring actions to assure that the basis of climate policies is based on a few of these key elements,” she clarifies.

Tijani Salami, a Nigeria-based sexual and reproductive health rights supporter, agrees that climate change disasters have impacted health services, and sexual and reproductive health rights.

” This is an age-long issue that has been neglected, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa,” claims Salami, a primary medical officer at the Nigeria-based Federal University of Technology Minna.

” In any disaster, health services of folks in such communities are affected usually … yet sadly the practice has constantly been that when feedbacks start, sexual and reproductive health for women and girls are disregarded.”

African governments, he says, need to raise investment in sexual and reproductive health and produce platforms that address the demands of women and girls influenced by disasters.

“In the long term, we should build durable communities that can alleviate health influence when climate-induced disaster takes place,” he includes.

Originally published on Phys.org