The World Health Organization recommends that people living in areas affected by Zika to avoid becoming pregnant. However, some exp...
The World Health Organization recommends that people living in areas affected by Zika to avoid becoming pregnant. However, some experts proposed, in a region say is unrealistic where the reproductive rights of women by law be severely restricted.
How Ebola for most people faded into a distant memory, Zika is supported to fear the virus. Every few weeks, it seems, there is news that the virus has reached in another country, and withdraw the number of professional athletes from the Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games continues to grow. To date advice on how to deal with the virus focused on the prevention of pregnancy. However, some experts say that the Council naive, ignorant of the fact that in most of the hardest hit by the epidemic, repressive laws that make it almost impossible for a woman to control, if you are pregnant.
It has long been known as Zika - believed mild symptoms in most people cause, the contract, but also can lead to Guillain-Barre syndrome and microcephaly in infants - it is transmitted by mosquitoes. More recently, it was discovered, however, that the virus can also be transmitted sexually. Until last week, the health of the community had assumed that the sexual transmission Zika on one side went, men to women. Then, on July 15, the centers of the Ministry of Health of the City of New York and Mental Health Disease Control and announced the first known case of a woman to pass the virus to a man who greatly expanding the potential number of people at risk.
Although sex is an important factor in the spread of Zika be, the strategic plan Answer International Zika - led by the World Health Organization (WHO) - still focuses on eliminating the mosquitoes, while the vector is directed sex with the recommendation that Men and women living in the affected areas "should be informed and directed to consider pregnancy delay." The problem, critics say, the advice is that the region bearing the brunt of the epidemic, Latin America, some of the most repressive laws reproductive- world health. should kill mosquitoes Particular attention the availability and accessibility to increase contraception and safe abortion, they say.
"The WHO guidelines, a reaction of the human rights of women," said Paula Avila-Guillen, spokesman Zika the Center for Reproductive Rights. You want a multi-faceted response to see that includes both the public health and human rights. "Women can not talk about condoms, if they are not empowered," she said.
The United Nations Office for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, also spoke on the subject. "In situations where sexual violence is increasing, and the sexual and reproductive health will be punished or simply not available, the efforts to contain the crisis by improving the focus on women and girls not pregnant counseling," he said in a statement in February.
Zika virus is not new - for more than six decades, outbreaks have occurred in Africa, Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands - but his arrival in South America. No population immunity, vaccines, specific treatments or rapid tests, the disease is spreading rapidly throughout the region. It was in May 2015, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) confirmed a warning on the first case of infection with the virus in Brazil Zika issued. In February 2016 Emergency Zika A global health by the WHO, which predicted by mid-2017 that 3 million to 4 million people in the Americas will be declared infected.
Access to family planning in Latin America is changing, but abortion is generally restricted or prohibited in the entire region, with the exception of certain methods of family planning, emergency contraception such as Cuba and Uruguay, and is illegal in many parts. About 22 percent of women of childbearing age in Latin America have unmet need for effective contraception. The region has been the highest rate of unintended pregnancies in the world - about 55 percent of pregnancies - because of lack of access to reproductive health and the high incidence of sexual violence. Honduras, for example, has the highest rape rates in the region, but maintains total ban on abortion and emergency contraception.
The UN Working Group on the issue of discrimination against women in law and in practice has recently recommended that governments "abolish the prohibition of contraception to provide including emergency contraception and access to modern and affordable contraceptives," notes that the restrictive laws ", who live in poverty in a highly discriminatory manner, are mainly affected women." Avila-Guillen, the recommendation is particularly important given the Zika epidemic.
"The reproductive rights of women choose life, that would like to have," she said. "A multifaceted response to Zika women and children at the center would all services to make it available. If a woman decides still to take the risk of Zika, if she wants to get pregnant, she is entitled to free maternity risk, and if your child has special needs, the government should provide the necessary resources available to meet them. "
When governments restrict the reproductive rights of women, there are organizations to increasingly fill unmet needs. Women on Web is a nonprofit organization, the on-line access to medication abortion (mifepristone and misoprostol) in countries where safe abortion available is not. A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine published in June by researchers at Princeton University and the University of Texas, and the women on the web founder Rebecca Gomperts, showed that published by PAHO has an epidemiological alert in November on canvas received 2015 women significantly more requests for medical abortion in all countries where the native transfer (or indigenous) Zika, legal abortion restricted and warnings national public for pregnant women, with the exception of Jamaica.
While researchers said they could not establish a clear link between the increase in drug abortion requests and concerns about Zika, they say their findings for abortion, underestimated the demand, as many women have a process for misoprostol uncertainty or found in local pharmacies or the black market used.
Avila-Guillen sound, the key to the spread of the virus Zika to stop the government introduced policies that restrict the ability of women to make their own decisions about reproduction. "If we want to fight against these diseases, we need to address in a comprehensive way," she said. "This is the time to do it."
This article was published in women and girls Hub. For weekly updates, you can to the electronic list of women and girls Subscribe hubs.
