| World's Women 2000: Chapter
3 - Health |
| Some important findings: |
- |
Life
expectancy continues to increase for women and men in most
developing regions but has decreased dramatically in Southern
Africa as a result of AIDS. |
- |
Infant
mortality is generally higher for boys than for girls, except
for some countries in Asia where gender-based discrimination
outweighs girls' biological advantage. |
- |
Where
women are sexually active at a young age, they are at risk
of suffering short- and long-term consequences of sexually
transmitted infections (including HIV), early pregnancy
and unsafe abortion. |
- |
Data
on maternal mortality and other causes of death are often
unavailable or, where available, are unreliable due to deficiencies
in vital statistics registration systems. |
- |
Women
now account for almost half of all cases of HIV/AIDS, and
in countries with high HIV prevalence, young women are at
higher risk than young men of contracting HIV. |
- |
New
efforts are being made to measure health expectancy---not
just life expectancy---of the world's ageing population.
|
