Women's health status in Africa--environmental perspectives from rural communities.

Abstract

Health research used to be the exclusive domain of clinicians and medical specialists, who focused attention on the biomedical causes of disease. Socioeconomic and environmental considerations that have important bearing on the ill health of rural African women were rarely integrated with the methodology constructed to investigate disease patterns. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that physical environmental factors and malnutrition have important effects on women's health in rural Africa. I validated this assumption in an empirical study of 441 people (n = 294 women) in 15 different rural localities in Ghana. Apart from women-specific problems relating to biological health needs during pregnancy, childbirth, and lactation, sexually transmitted diseases, abortion, and mental health, environmental factors had a great impact on women's well-being in the study area. Sixty-two percent of the women reported that the endemic disease malaria is the most prevalent disease as far as they were concerned. Other community and household health hazards were found; for example, cooking over an open fuel wood stove resulted in an almost 50% greater chance of stillbirth among pregnant women.