EU urged to step up action on gender health inequality

The EU has been urged to do more to help tackle gender inequality in health which is said to blight the well-being of ‘millions’ of girls and women.

Speaking in Brussels on Thursday, Piroska Östlin, of the Swedish National Institute of Public Health, called on the EU to give "greater priority" to the issue.

She said, “Gender inequality in health needs to be higher up the political agenda. It is not enough just to make a commitment to equality or to sign international agreements. The EU has got to devote more resources.

“The EU’s roadmap for promoting gender equality is all well and good but what is needed are concrete actions which will make a real difference.”

Östlin was on a three-day visit to Brussels and Luxembourg as part of an ongoing lobbying campaign to highlight the issue.

Examples of health problems facing women include what she described as the “scandal” that worldwide 1600 women die every day in childbirth or due to pregnancy-related complications.

Another is that globally, 40 million adolescent girls become pregnant every year and that an estimated 61 per cent of people with HIV in sub-Sahara Africa are female.

One of the measures Östlin would like the EU to pursue includes increasing female participation in the political decision-making process where, she says, women are currently “chronically” under-represented.

She told this website that she would also like the EU to produce an inventory of ‘good practice’ in Europe and elsewhere on what individual countries are doing to promote gender equality.

Östlin, who has co-authored a report on the issue for the WHO, is also a board member of the Dublin-based European Institute of Women's Health.

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