“Second, we are focusing on the needs and contributions of women and girls, who are still frequently overlooked and underserved by health professionals who don’t notice their suffering or hear their concerns. Our commitment to promoting the health of women and girls is, of course, for their sake, but also for the sake of their families and communities. Because when a woman’s health suffers, her family suffers and then there is a ripple effect throughout a village as well. But when women are healthy, the benefits are similarly broad.
Too often, the social, economic, and cultural factors that restrict their access to health services—such as gender-based violence, child marriage, female genital mutilation, lack of education, lack of access to economic opportunity, and other forms of discrimination—remain unacknowledged and unaddressed. We are linking our health programs to our broader development efforts to address those underlying political, economic, social, and gender problems. And we’re working with governments, civil society groups, and individuals to make sure that the needs of women and girls are recognized as critical not only by us, but by the health ministers, the people at the grassroots who administer care every day, that they are taken into account in the budgets and the planning of finance ministries, prime ministers, and presidents.”
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