3rd SOCHUM

Iran
Healthcare Inequality for Women in Developing Countries

Women’s Healthcare Inequality in Developing Countries

Introduction and Background:

An inequality in women's healthcare has been prevalent for the past few centuries, with

women often being dismissed with hysteria or outright refused any medical attention at all.

Though in more recent history the gendered divide of medicinal services has been slowly bridged

together, a large majority of women, many of whom are in developing countries, still lack proper

healthcare.

The international rates of mortality during maternity, in the year 2000, were 342 deaths

per 100,000 live births, since then, these rates have improved, with a thirty-eight percent

decrease, in the year 2017, there were 211 deaths per 100,000 live births. This is an improvement

in the overall status of the world's maternity mortality rates, but when examining the countries

that have the highest death to live birth ratio, primarily still developing countries in Africa, one

observes that these rates were and still are rather high. In, again, the year 2017 the top three

countries that had the highest rates of mortality in maternity were Sierra Leone, 1,120 deaths per

100,000 live births, Chad, 1,140 deaths per 100,000 live births, and South Sudan, 1,150 deaths

per 100,000 live births. Advancements in women's medicine is still needed quite expediently.

Within a large portion of the countries with the highest, death to live birth ratios, the

cause of death in maternity cases often is due to hemorrhoids, amniotic fluids (fluid surrounding

the fetus) entering the bloodstream, obstructed labor, and high blood pressure leading to blood

clots. A good portion of these occurrences can and have been caused by a lack of or poor
execution of medical practice, unfortunately meaning that several hundreds of deaths were

caused by poor practice of medicine and could have been entirely avoided with proper

healthcare.

United Nations Involvement:

In several statements, the UN has expressed concern for the death to live birth ratios, the

reduced access of planned parenthood programs, and lack of agency and education on their own

bodies in developing countries. A five year program was established from 2012 to 2016 where

the United Nations Population Fund and the French Muskoka Fund joined their forces together in

order to try and reduce the maternal death percentage. The program launched in Chad, Togo,

Senegal, and Côte d'Ivoire worked to raise public awareness on the subject through several

means, one of the more interesting of which was a social media campaign on facebook. The

campaign seemed to prove successful of all their education plans, with the site reaching over

80,000 visits and searches. Alongside this education plan they funded several mobile clinics

which were able to reach areas without well enough access to hospitals.

The first campaign proved overall successful in the four countries in the program and due

to this, the groups were pledged donations of 95 million Euros by the french government so that

the program could be extended until 2017. The following years program continued much of the

same work as the first five years, mobile clinics, education campaigns, and parenthood planning

programs, but the number of countries involved was extended also to Benin, Guinea, Mali, and

Niger.

Country Policy:

Reflecting the trajectory of the world, Iran's women equality in the subject of healthcare,

has improved a good deal over the past decades. The death to live birth ratio in Iran is 16 to
100,000. This ratio is better than the majority of the world’s average, even being in the top 50

best countries for birth to death ratio. The policies that Iran has put into place, such as the act that

calls for no discrimination agaist any singled out group to enjoy the right to healthcare, meaning

that every minority and majority in Iran has the right to accessable and proper medical attention.

The government must support women during pregnancy and the childbearing process, these

policies attempt to include all the aspects that might be affected in the pregnancy process such as

security, food, education, and work, should the woman in question not be provided for or able to

provide for themself.

Solutions:

One of the main problems in dealing with medical availability for women is to think

about accessibility in general. If a woman is not able to physically reach the hospital then there is

some reform needed to be made.

In the short term sending troops of mobile clinics out in order to bring the medical service

to the places that are in need of it may be a good idea. Mobile clinics have been attempted before

with several degrees of success. One of the more notable instances of mobile clinics working out

for the better would be in the UN Partnership with the the French Muskoka Fund, using methods

similar to those implemented in that particular mission would be well spent. The mobile teams

were sent out with access to cars, bikes, and other modes of transportation that would enable

them to traverse the terrain more easily than residents might be able to. Iran could pitch in some

funds for this mission, but they would likely also have to obtain help from some other institutes,

such as the WHO, who have previously aided in mobile medical clinics and could provide,

through previous knowledge, some insight on how to better spread out the funds that could be

raised.
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