World Health Organization
New global commitment to primary health care for all at Astana conference
24 Oct 2018
Civil Society Actors | 25 Oct 2024
The burden of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) poses a growing threat to population health and well-being and to hard-fought progress on gender equity and women’s rights. We call on representatives of the United Nations and international bodies, governments, business, civil society, health professionals, researchers, philanthropic organisations, and the public to join a coordinated movement to safeguard the health of women, girls, and gender minorities by tackling NCDs by sharing evidence, best practice, and learning.
Efforts to improve maternal and new-born health, demographic transitions, and changes in dietary and behavioural patterns around the world have seen NCDs become the main cause of mortality and morbidity for women, killing 18 million women annually. Women and girls face a triple challenge of reproductive and maternal conditions, infectious diseases and NCDs. Around the world, girls and women living with NCDs experience specific challenges in accessing prevention, early diagnosis, treatment, and care, particularly in low-resource contexts. These include low prioritisation of women’s health within families, limited access to financial resources to cover the costs, their caring responsibilities, and restrictions on their ability to travel freely, to name a few.
Feminist solutions to addressing NCDs require an appreciation of the multiple identities and social positions women, girls and other genders hold during their lives. We need to mobilise contextual, community-owned knowledge to respond to unmet needs, reduce discrimination and support gender-equitable health interventions. We need to develop innovative forms of collaboration, harness technology, and link research to action that can support the right of women, girls, and gender minorities to participate in decisions concerning their health and wellbeing and access affordable, quality healthcare at every stage of their lives.
We call for multisectoral and multistakeholder partners to share evidence, best practice and learning that can advance progress towards SDG 3.4 and the WHO global action plan for the prevention and control of noncommunicable diseases 2013-2030, including its Appendix 3 - the updated menu of policy options and cost-effective interventions for the prevention and control of noncommunicable diseases - and the NCD implementation roadmap 2023-2030.
Ahead of the UN High-Level Meetings on health that will be held during the 78th session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA 78) in September 2023 we set out four focus areas for collaboration to improve health services and outcomes for all women and girls.
We call for examples and learning that can support the following aims. Please click here to contribute your relevant resources.
We call for examples and learning that can support the following aims. Please click here to contribute your relevant resources.
Implement equitable, interoperable, and cost-effective digital solutions within health systems to enable effective prevention and management of NCDs across the continuum of care (screening, diagnosis, treatment, rehabilitation, and palliative care), promote behaviour change, and improve the availability of information available to women and girls.
Integrate NCD prevention into existing maternal and primary healthcare programmes to lower the risk of disease transmission from one generation to the next; enhance early diagnosis and preventative treatment uptake; and support women’s lifelong health.
We call for examples and learning that can support the following aims. Please click here to contribute your relevant resources.
In line with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, eliminate barriers and discrimination preventing women from participating in activities, work, policies, planning, governance and decisions that impact their health and wellbeing.
We call for examples and learning that can support the following aims. Please click here to contribute your relevant resources.
Commit to the routine collection and analysis of data disaggregated by sex and gender, to build a better understanding of sex and gender differences and intersecting disadvantages in the determinants of health conditions; risk factors; barriers to accessing services; pathways leading to quality care; and outcomes.
This call represents an opportunity to ensure everyone has access to quality health services, irrespective of their identity. It is an opportunity for everyone, including men working to safeguard the health of women, girls, and gender minorities to formulate feminist, rights-based solutions to address NCDs, which recognise the multiple identities and social positions that women, girls, and other genders hold during their lives.