Women on the Other Side of War and Poverty: Its Effect on the Health of Reproduction

Abstract

IntroductionThroughout the history of the world, the ones who had confronted the bitterest face of poverty and war had always been the women. As known poverty and war affects human health either directly or indirectly, the effects of this condition on health and status of women in the society should not be ignored. This study intends to cast light on the effects of war and poverty on the reproductive health of women. For this purpose, the face of war affecting the women, the problem of immigration, inequalities in distribution of income based on gender and the effects of all these on the reproductive health of women will be addressed. War and Women's HealthFamine, synonymous with war and poverty, is clearer for women; war means deep disadvantages such as full destruction, loss of future and uncertainty for women. Wars are conflicts that destroy families, societies and cultures that negatively affect the health of community and cause violation of human rights. According to the data of World Health Organization (WHO) and World Bank, in 2002 wars had been among the first ten reasons which killed the most and caused disabilities. Civil losses are at the rate of 90% within all losses (1). War has many negative effects on human health. One of these is its effect of shortening the average human life. According to the data of WHO, the average human life is 68.1 years for males and 72.7 years for females. It is being thought that severe military conflicts in Africa shorten the expected lifetime for more than 2 years. In general, WHO had calculated that 269 thousand people had died in 1999 due to the effect of wars and that loss of 8.44 million healthy years of life had occurred (2,3). Wars negatively affect the provision of health services. Health institutions such as hospitals, laboratories and health centers are direct targets of war. Moreover, the wars cause the migration of qualified health employees, and thus the health services hitches. Assessments made indicate that the effect of destruction in the infrastructure of health continues for 5-10 years even after the finalization of conflicts (3). Due to resource requirements in the restructuring investments after war, the share allocated to health has decreased (1). Mortalities and MorbiditiesThe ones who are most affected from wars are women and children. While deaths depending on direct violence affect the male population, the indirect deaths kill children, women and elders more. In Iraq between 1990-1994, infant deaths had shown this reality in its more bare form with an increase of 600% (4). The war taking five years increases the child deaths under age of 5 by 13%. Also 47% of all the refugees in the world and 50% of asylum seekers and displaced people are women and girls and 44% refugees and asylum seekers are children under the age of 18 (5).

Helping to heal nature and ourselves through human-rights-based and gender-responsive One Health

“…As part of this review, we conducted a reference search on PubMed for brucellosis publications between 2001 and 2018. Out of 14,304 publications found, only 1.5% pertained to health consequences of brucellosis on women's reproductive life, which included abortions, premature delivery, intrauterine death, congenital brucellosis, misscarriages, neonatal brucellosis [58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65]. A preliminary review of these publications only detected one instance where gender issues rather than sex-related health consequences where examined: "One distinct characteristic of the disease in this country is that the most cases are noted in female patients, by contrast to the rest of the world possibly reflecting an increased transmission as a foodborne disease (via milk cosumption) or increased participation of women in procedures associated with brucellosis transmission (eg.…”

Temporary Adjustment or Normative Change? Fertility and Marriage Preferences of Syrian Refugees in Turkey in the Context of Forced Migration

“…Since their arrival in Turkey after 2011, there is a chance that the fertility and marriage preferences of Syrian households changed due to forced migration along with the other habits due to cultural and economic differences in the country of arrival. Also, there has been a potential increase in reproductive health problems due to war and poverty caused by sexual abuse and rape, all kinds of violence and pregnancies as a result of undesired but forced or obliged marriages including rapes (Cevirme et al, 2015).…”