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Experts want nuanced study of women’s health issues 

To address women's health-related issues in the country, it is high time for a shift in practice and research, opined…

Experts want nuanced study of women’s health issues 

Representational image (Photo: Getty Images)

To address women's health-related issues in the country, it is high time for a shift in practice and research, opined a group of experts.

Speaking at a press conference on 'The Future of Women's health: Using data and research to shape policy and programs' organised by the George Institute for Global Health and the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), the health professionals said women's health research is still in its infancy.

Women are purposefully and systematically excluded from clinical research. Even when data is collected on both men and women, sex disaggregated analysis is never done. So women's health conditions are not studied in a nuanced manner. 

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Dr Robyn Norton, principal director, George Institute for Global Health, India, remarked: "Non-communicable diseases (NCD) have emerged as the largest killer of women in India — responsible for 60 per cent of their deaths in 2013, up from 38 per cent in 1990." 

Giving an instance of how much people are interested in doing gender-based analyses, Dr Norton pointed out, "Of 768 trials on Clinicaltrials.gov, 89 per cent reported recruitment of male and female participants, but less than 1 per cent reported an intention to analyse results by gender." 

Another speaker Ritu Dhillon, senior financial advisor at ICMR, said though allocation of funds on gender basis was being done for the last 10 years, the challenge was proper implementation of those funds. "In India, 17 states are providing gender-based budget," she claimed. 

Dr Shamika Ravi, senior fellow Brookings Institute stated: "While doing research on women's health related issues the focus should be public health infrastructure, maternal health, child health, communicable disease and non-communicable disease among others." 

Citing data, Dr Ravi said the highest cause of female deaths across India was cardiovascular diseases (20 per cent) and Kerala led with 34.9 per cent deaths. He said the second biggest cause of deaths was ill-defined (17.3 per cent).

Other causes of death, he said, included respiratory diseases, diarrheal problems, etc. 

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