Gender Responsive Budgeting and Women's Reproductive Rights ...

Improvements in health can contribute to growth and poverty reduction in a range of different ways. Forexample, better health results in fewer workdays lost, a better-fed and healthier worker is likely to bemore productive, and better-fed and healthier children will learn better than hungry and ill ones. Whena population is healthy, individuals and families need to allocate fewer resources to health care. In particular,women and girls need to allocate less of their time to caring for the sick.Attention to reproductive health should be especially important as RH problems currently constitutethe leading cause of death and disability for women internationally. Globally, 20% of the burden ofdisease among women of reproductive age is related to sex and reproduction. In sub-Saharan Africa,the percentage is 40%. Virtually all (99%) of maternal deaths occur in developing countries. ImprovedRH can directly help achieve at least three of the MDGs—reducing child mortality, improving maternalhealth, and combating HIV/AIDS—and can help indirectly with most of the others. In terms of actuallives, UNFPA estimates that most of the maternal deaths that occur could be saved through providingemergency care to all women rather than only to rich ones. Further, if women were given the means toprevent unintended pregnancies, a further 20–35% of maternal deaths could be avoided.Yet relatively little is being spent on RH services. In 1994 the World Bank estimated that it would costUS$6.75 per person in poor countries to provide a basic package of RH services which included familyplanning, prevention and treatment of STIs, antenatal and delivery care and health education. In thatsame year, poor countries were spending only about US$2.00 per person. The commitments made atthe ICPD did not help to solve that problem. By 2000, less than half of the US$5.7 billion which the ICPDsaid was needed by that date had been raised.Poverty, inequality and economic dependency also increase vulnerability to HIV/AIDS. For example,those who are poor can be forced into selling sex for money, and thus risk infection. The risk will beincreased if, as is common, they are offered a higher “price” for having sex without a condom. Somepeople migrate in search of work. If they do so without partners, they and their partners might seek sexelsewhere and be exposed to infection.References: UNFPA. State of World Population 2005: The Promise of Equality: Gender Equity, ReproductiveHealth and the Millennium Development Goals. New York: UNFPA, 2005.Stop Aids Now, WPF & Share-Net. Integrating HIV/AIDS and Sexual and Reproductive Health into Policies,Programs and Services, 2004.Health sector reforms and reproductive healthDuring the 1990s many developing countries introduced a range of health sector reforms (HSRs). Thesereforms were meant to address problems of poor quality care, limited access, inequity, insufficientfunds, inefficiencies, and lack of responsiveness to needs. Sometimes the reforms were part of broaderstructural adjustment programs in Africa and Asia. The reforms were strongly promoted by the WorldBank, which saw them as meeting the need for increased efficiency and cost effectiveness.Common aspects of health sector reforms in the 1990s included:• Changes in financing mechanisms, i.e. in the share of taxes, social and private insurance, userfees and other sources of revenue, a bigger role for the private sector, and new approaches to .donor funding;30S O M E K E Y L I N K A G E S