From poverty to power - Oxfam-Québec

FROM POVERTY TO POWER24-hour advice to countries on SARS surveillance, preparedness,and response measures.As a direct result of this global collaboration, the cause of SARSwas identified and the disease was rapidly isolated and treated.By the beginning of July 2003, just four months after the firstcase was identified, the human-to-human transmission of SARSappeared to have been broken everywhere in the world. Althoughsome 800 people had died, a global pandemic had been contained.Source: World Health Organization (2003) ‘The Operational Response to SARS’,www.who.int/csr/sars/goarn2003_4_16/en/print.htmlCHRONIC VULNERABILITY AND HEALTHPoor health is both a disaster in itself and has damaging knock-oneffects. It reduces people’s earnings potential, often forcing them intodebt, increases the burden on other family members, including children,and transmits deprivation down the generations. The sudden illnessof a family member is one of the most common reasons why a familytips over the edge into a cycle of poverty and debt. Chronic illnessessuch as HIV constitute a continuing drain on the household, increasingthe workload of women and sometimes pushing them into activitiesthat increase the risk of further illness, whether through sex work orthe physical toll of excessive hours working in unsafe or unhygienicconditions.Because of their socialised role as caregivers, women are mostactive in struggles for better health care.Women are also more likely tocontract diseases such as malaria, TB, and HIV. 65 They are usually thelast in the family to access health care, especially if it has to be paid for– a sign both of their lack of economic power and of prevalentattitudes towards women in many cultures.There is no starker condemnation of the failure to guaranteewomen’s right to health than the lack of progress in reducing ‘maternalmortality’ – the anodyne term for women who die in pregnancy orchildbirth. Worldwide, over 500,000 women die each year frompregnancy-related causes – one woman every minute – but that figureconceals extreme inequalities. A woman’s risk of dying ranges from238