Women's health in the Eastern Mediterranean Region: time for a paradigm shift

Investing in the health of women and girls has been shown to produce good returns not only for women and girls, but also for the society as a whole. It yields high returns on investment through improved productivity, reduced absenteeism, and reduced health care costs.

Over the past decades the terms women's health and reproductive health were used interchangeably to refer to conditions related to pre-conception, pregnancy, childbirth, and postnatal care only. However, with the improvement in life expectancy, reduction in maternal mortality ratios and the constant reduction in fertility rates, women now enjoy more years and are exposed to risk factors and diseases that are not always related to the reproductive function. Women in the post-menopausal period undergo physiological and psychological changes that may cause discomfort or change their response to several risk factors, and some diseases may present differently in women than in men. With this in mind, and in an attempt to better understand and respond to women's comprehensive health needs, the WHO Office for the Eastern Mediterranean Region (WHO/EMRO) launched a programme on women's health to generate and analyze evidence related to women's overall health beyond the reproductive component and propose relevant solutions. We need to act now to ensure that health services for women are available, acceptable, and accessible, to ensure that women's health needs are well-covered in the hope of achieving Universal Health Coverage by 2030.