OTTAWA – The health concerns facing Canadian women in the early years of the 21st century will have a familiar ring to them, according to predictions made at an international forum on women’s health.
Women will be living longer and needing extended health care in the later years of their life, Susan McDaniel from the University of Alberta told the first Canada-United States women’s health forum.
Within 20 years, the average female life expectancy could rise to 86 years from 81 years, she said. Then, it will stabilize or begin to decline.
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However, even as health care needs increase in an aging female population, government health care and other support services are being cut.
Poverty will continue to be a major cause of women’s health problems.
And if the gap continues to grow between the income classes in Canada while governments continue to reduce services available, the situation will get worse, she said.
“The risk of health problems could increase because women and children are the first casualties of cutbacks,” she said.
This was a recurring theme during the two-day conference organized by the two governments and involving close to 300 health policy makers, activists, researchers and academics from the two countries.
Speaker after speaker said government cutbacks, poverty and male decision-makers continue to be barriers to achievement of good health services for women despite promises by governments to improve.
Nafis Sadik, executive director of the United Nations Population Fund, talked of the spread of the AIDS virus among women. She said in some developing countries, young girls are being raped by men with AIDS because the men have been told they will be cured if they have sex with a virgin.
Mary Jane England, president of the Washington Business Group on Health, linked violence and growing poverty in the U.S. to declining health standards.
“As many as 43 million people, many of them women and children, do not have health coverage (in the U.S.),” she said. “Every 15 seconds in America, a woman is battered. These are health issues.”
Former Canadian health minister Monique BŽgin said females between the ages of 15 and 19 are twice as likely to be hospitalized than are males the same age. Almost 40 percent of those hospital visits are because of teenage pregnancy.
U.S. health secretary Donna Shalala opened the conference by talking about the health care stakes of a baby girl just born in Alabama or Alberta. She called her Michelle.
Will she receive the health care she needs, the tests and vaccinations required, the encouragement of a healthy lifestyle, protection from violence and care in her old age?
“The answers to these questions will determine not only Michelle’s future, not only her family’s future but the future of Canada and the United States as well,” said Shalala. “Right now, our collective future is in trouble.”
