Women's health: how it scored in Beijing

The Beijing Conference on Women has come and gone, leaving in its wake a Platform for Action that has raised mixed feelings about its content-reached mostly by compromise-yet gives some promise of success if-the big if-governments transform the flowery wording into the called-for reforms and measures. Over the previous two years ICN, in close collaboration with the UK's Advocacy for Women's Health Group (AWHG), encouraged its associations to campaign hard to put women's health high on the agenda. In Beijing ICN worked with AWHG in a workshop on adolescent health, participated in the Thailand Nurses' Association workshop on empowerment of women in health and lobbied delegates (aided by nurse delegates from Bahrain, Korea, USA and Zimbabwe) to ensure that the NGO's recommendations in the health area were included in the Platform for Action.