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"Women's
health security must be a priority of all people and governments working together. "Without good health, a woman's God-given potential can never be realized. And without healthy women, the world's potential can never be realized." Remarks For The World Health Organization Forum on Women And Health Security Delivered September 5, 1995 by Thank you, Dr. Nakajima. Dr. Nakajima, Dr. Sadik, Gertude Mongella, delegates to the Fourth U.N. Conference on Women, and guests from all corners of the world, I am honored to be here this morning among women and girls everywhere. I commend the World Health Organization for making women's health a top priority and for establishing the Global Commission on Women's Health. I am proud that in the preparatory meetings for this Fourth World Conference on Women, the United States took the lead in highlighting the importance of a comprehensive approach to women's health. That approach builds on actions taken at previous women's conferences and the recent conferences at Cairo and Copenhagen, whose goals to promote the health and well-being of all people were endorsed by 180 nations. Safe, Effective, Voluntary Family Planning Cairo was particularly significant as governmental and non-governmental participants worked together to craft a Program for Action which, among other things, calls for universal access to good quality reproductive health care services, including safe, effective, voluntary family planning; greater access to education and health care; more responsibility on the part of men in sexual and reproductive health and childbearing; and reduction of wasteful resource consumption. Here at this conference, improving girls and women's
health is a priority of the draft Platform for Action. It includes such
goals as: Women's Right to Live Up To Their Potentials Goals such as these illustrate a new commitment to the well-being of girls and women and a belief in their rights to live up to their own God-given potentials. At long last, people and their governments everywhere
are beginning to understand that investing in the health of women and girls
is as important to the prosperity of nations as investing in the development
of open markets and trade. Scientists, doctors, nurses, community leaders and women themselves are working to improve and safeguard the health of women and families all over the world. If we join together as a global community, we can lift up the health and dignity of all women and their families in the remaining years of the 20th century and on into the next millenium. Yet, for all the promise the future holds, we also know that many barriers lie in our way. For too long, women have been denied access to
health care, education, economic opportunities, legal protection and human
rights - all of which are used as building blocks for a healthy and productive
life. Today, at least fifteen percent of pregnant women
suffer life threatening complications and more than one-half million women
around the world die in childbirth. There must be a renewed commitment to improving
maternal health. The WHO launched in 1987 a Safe Motherhood Initiative
to halve maternal mortality by the year 2000. To reach that goal, more
attention must be paid to emergency medical care as well as primary prenatal
care. 100 MILLION Women Need Family Planning Services The commitment of the WHO and its Global Commission on Women's Health to make childbearing and childbirth a safe and healthy period of every woman's life deserves action on the part of every nation represented here. One hundred million women cannot obtain or are
not using family planning services because they are poor, uneducated or
lack access to care. The Cairo document recognizes "the
basic right of all couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly
the number, spacing and timing of their children and to have the information
and means to do so." Women and men must also have the right to make those most intimate of all decisions free of discrimination, coercion and violence, particularly any coercive practices that force women into abortions or sterilizations. On these issues, the US supports the provisions in the Beijing Platform for Action that reaffirm consensus language that was agreed to at the Cairo Conference about a year ago. It declared that "in no case should abortion be promoted as a method of family planning." The Platform asks governments "to strengthen their commitment to women's health, to deal with the health impact of unsafe abortion as a major public health concern and to reduce the recourse to abortion through expanded and improved family planning services." Violence Against Young Women Is Leading Cause of Death Violence against women remains a leading cause
of death among girls and women between the ages of 14 and 44 - violence
from ethnic and religious conflicts, crime in the streets and brutality
in the home. Violence against girls and women goes beyond the
beatings, rape, killings and forced prostitution that arise from poverty,
wars and domestic conflicts. HIV, AIDS, and sexually transmitted diseases threaten more and more women - and experts predict that by the end of this decade more than half of the people in the world with HIV will be women. AIDS, which threatens whole families and regions, demands the strongest possible response. Governments and the international community must address head-on the growing number of women who are being infected. More than 700,000 women worldwide face breast
cancer each year - over 300,000 die of it. It's the leading cause of death
for women in their prime in the developed world. Tobacco Number One Preventable Caiuse of Death Tobacco use is the number one preventable cause of death. Ninety percent of women who smoke began to smoke as adolescents - leading to high rates of heart disease, cancer, and chronic lung disease later in life. As the WHO points out, we also need to recognize and effectively address the fact that women are far more likely to be exposed to work-related and environmental health hazards. Policies to alleviate and eliminate such health hazards associated with work in the home and in the workplace demand action. Research also indicates that certain communicable diseases affect women in greater numbers. Tuberculosis, for example, is responsible for the deaths of one million women each year and those in their early and reproductive years are most vulnerable. When health care systems around the world don't work for women; when our mothers, daughters, sisters, friends and co-workers are denied access to quality care because they are poor, do not have health insurance, or simply because they are women, it is not just their health that is put at risk. It is the health of their families and communities as well. Like many nations, the United States brings to this conference a serious commitment to improving women's health. We bring with us a series of initiatives which represent the first steps to carrying out this Conference's Platform for Action. We are continuing to work for health care reform to ensure that every citizen has access to affordable, quality care. We are proposing a comprehensive and coordinated plan to reduce smoking by children and adolescents by 50 percent. We are working to address the many factors that contribute to teenage pregnancy, our most serious social problem, by encouraging abstinence and personal responsibility on the part of young men and women; improving access to health care and family planning services; and supporting health education in our schools. We are pursuing a public policy agenda on HIV/AIDS that is specific to women, adolescents, and children. We are continuing to fund and conduct contraceptive research and development. U.S. Addressing Health Needs Through Initiatives We are addressing the health needs of women through initiatives such as: *The National Action Plan on Breast Cancer - a public, private partnership working with all agencies of government, the media, scientific organizations, advocacy groups and industry to advance breast health and eradicate breast cancer as a threat to the lives of American women. * An Expansion of the National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program - which will ensure that women who need regular screening and detection services have access to them, and that those services meet quality standards. * The inclusion of women in clinical trials for research and testing or drugs or other interventions that probe specific differences between men and women in patterns of disease and reactions to therapy. * The special health care needs of older women will be addressed through educational campaigns about osteoporosis, cancer and other diseases. * And the U.S. is conducting the largest clinical research study ever undertaken to examine the major causes of death, disability and frailty in post-menopausal women. Women's health security must be a priority of
all people and governments working together. So let us join together to ensure that every little boy and girl that comes into our world is healthy and wanted; that every young woman has the education and economic opportunity to live a healthy life; and that every woman has access to the health care she needs throughout her life to fulfill her potential in her family, her work, and her community. If we care about the futures of our daughters, our sons, and the generations that will follow them, we can do nothing less. Thank you for the work you do every day to bring
better health to the women,children, and families of this world. Most of all, thank you for being part of this historic and vital discussion, which holds so much promise for our future. |
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LIZNOTES TABLE OF CONTENTS | RESEARCH ROOMS | THE READING ROOM
GENDERGAPPERS | WOMAN SUFFRAGE TIMELINE | THE LIZ LIBRARY ENTRANCE
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