International Women's Day 2014: women's health equity is progress for all.

Ophira Ginsburg

doi:10.3332/ecancer.2014.ed33

Abstract

International Women's Day 2014: women's health equity is progress for all.

Highlights

As the economics case for investing in global cancer control begins to take shape and cancer has a place on the global health agenda [14], the time has come to place women’s health equity among the core elements of global cancer policy
Capacity-building for safe, good quality surgery and radiation have rarely been mentioned in global health discussions; but this, too may change, as the Lancet Global Surgery Commission and the UICC Global Task Force on Radiotherapy for Cancer Control (GTF.RCC) embark on their challenging work in 2014
International Women’s Day can be a time to celebrate and encourage more women to become leaders in oncology: women like Dr Sandra Swain, past-president of ASCO, Dr Martine Piccart, past-president of EORTC and current president of ECCO, Dr Mary Gospodarowicz, medical director of Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and president of UICC, and Dr Felicia Knaul, economist and Director of the Harvard Global Equity Initiative who co-founded and leads the GTF.CCC. On this International Women’s Day we can take a moment to reflect on three things: 1. While there remains much to be done to decrease preventable suffering and death from women’s cancers throughout the world, there has been great progress, with the dramatic decreases observed in the incidence of cervical cancer and mortality from breast and cervical cancer in high-income countries

Summary

Introduction

Given the young ages at which women develop breast and cervical cancer in low-resource settings, children whose mothers die from these cancers become “cancer orphans” [12]. Without considering the costs of care (if any is available), a diagnosis of breast or cervical cancer contributes to the cycle of poverty.

Results

Conclusion