A healthiness worker screens a pregnant women in Barranquilla, Colombia. Why must addressing the Zika virus likewise consist of addressing root triggers and social norms? Photo by: Pan American healthiness Organization / CC BY-NC
The link between Zika virus infection throughout pregnancy and birth defects poses yet an additional threat for girls and women of reproductive age in the Americas as they battle to chart a positive road through life transitions.
Unfortunately for girls and young women, the choice of whether or once to come to be pregnant is regularly not their own. Age and electricity dynamics heighten the impact of traditional gender and social norms for girls and young women and can easily inhibit informed decision making and positive sexual and reproductive healthiness behaviors. Lack of empowerment leaves them much more vulnerable to gender-based violence, increasing the risk of unintended pregnancy, while fear of discrimination from healthiness providers or condemnation from family and community means girls and young women delay seeking and receiving contraception or antenatal care.
A public healthiness response to the Zika virus should consist of addressing several of these root triggers that preclude girls and young women from realizing their sexual and reproductive healthiness options — and social norms that inhibit contraceptive usage for girls and young women should be addressed in programming.
Activists claim little or no sex education is available in schools in Latin America and the Caribbean. Young girls in the region with no education have actually a a lot better birth rate compared to girls along with a secondary education or more, and girls living in the poorest twenty percent of households are 5 and a half times as most likely to provide birth as girls in the wealthiest households. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 56 percent of every one of pregnancies in Latin America and the Caribbean are unintended, and unintended pregnancies are especially common among young girls.
Successful approaches to social norm adjustment could consist of community campaigns and media events to catalyze discussion, such as radio dramas; mobilization of social networks, schools and community leaders to promote and sustain changes; training healthiness providers to boost the quality of youth-friendly reproductive healthiness services; and advocacy to guarantee a policy environment that supports reproductive healthiness among girls and young women.
According to UNFPA, contraceptive usage among unmarried sexually energetic girls is 65 percent, half of which is condom usage — twenty percentage points better compared to their married counterparts, that regularly have actually much less electricity to negotiate contraception compared to unmarried girls. Even though the threat of Zika virus might lead to better contraceptive usage overall, we cannot be complacent. Unintended pregnancies will certainly occur, several of which will certainly be terminated unsafely. Not surprisingly, the emergence of the virus has actually reopened the debate on access to safe abortion in the region. While there is now intense focus to reduce pregnancies in the context of Zika, we call for long term solutions to reduce unintended pregnancies that adjustment the fundamental status of women and girls, reduce the rates of gender-based violence, and broadly boost access to contraceptive ways and services.
In spite of some government’s insight that women delay pregnancy, not every woman has actually this option. Numerous girls and young women are faced along with unintended pregnancies, uncertain access to contraception, higher rates of sexual violence and restrictions on safe abortion.
Instead of broad government statements concerning women’s health, we look to potential trendsetters and communities to engage in the discussion regarding gender and social norms as they relate to the consequences of Zika infection throughout pregnancy and birth defects.
A comprehensive response must invest in generating and implementing evidence-based efforts to adjustment social and gender norms about reproductive health, contraceptive use, gender-based violence, and gender equity, and build regional capacity enabling young women and men to live gender-equitable lives devoid of violence, coerced sex and unintended pregnancy.
We should challenge and transform environments to allow girls and young women to make decisions regarding their reproductive health.
The authors would certainly adore to thank their colleagues from the Passages project team. FHI 360 is portion of a group of global healthiness organizations implementing this brand-new reproductive healthiness initiative in Asia and Africa, which aims to boost the healthy and balanced timing and spacing of pregnancies by youth and first-time parents in producing countries.
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