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COVID-19 Pandemic Worsening Gender Inequalities for Women and Girls in Sub-Saharan Africa

Pandemics such as COVID-19 have often resulted in international, national and sub-regional crises, with considerable inequities across many societies. With the already existing structural and socio-economic inequalities in sub-Saharan Africa, the stay-at-home orders, lockdowns, and shutdowns across...

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Autores principales: Ahinkorah, Bright Opoku, Hagan, John Elvis, Ameyaw, Edward Kwabena, Seidu, Abdul-Aziz, Schack, Thomas
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8594039/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34816232
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fgwh.2021.686984
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author Ahinkorah, Bright Opoku
Hagan, John Elvis
Ameyaw, Edward Kwabena
Seidu, Abdul-Aziz
Schack, Thomas
author_facet Ahinkorah, Bright Opoku
Hagan, John Elvis
Ameyaw, Edward Kwabena
Seidu, Abdul-Aziz
Schack, Thomas
author_sort Ahinkorah, Bright Opoku
collection PubMed
description Pandemics such as COVID-19 have often resulted in international, national and sub-regional crises, with considerable inequities across many societies. With the already existing structural and socio-economic inequalities in sub-Saharan Africa, the stay-at-home orders, lockdowns, and shutdowns across the sub-regional states could worsen and have a tremendous impact on vulnerable groups. Numerous studies across a variety of contexts have well-documented gender, and cultures on varied health outcomes. However, these have not been contextualized in sub-Saharan Africa in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic. This mini review discusses the ways by which COVID-19 has impacted the lives of girls and women across sub-Saharan Africa and the strategies that can help mitigate these challenges. The mini review specifically shares light on a wide array of dimensions where the inequities exist. These include the disproportionate areas affected by COVID-19; household inequities; educational inequalities; work/employment inequalities; disparities related to healthcare, sexual and reproductive health as well as housing inequities. Conclusively, the review accentuates the need for sub-Saharan African countries to adopt low-cost preventive measures such as discouraging mass gatherings (e.g., local community gatherings), and face masking with non-medical cloth like masks for the local populace as these are crucial in managing the spread of the virus among disproportionate women population. For localities with limited access to handwashing facilities, alternative strategies like alcohol-based hand rub solutions could be deployed. The complex interrelated disparities require a broad set of policy actions to lessen the current burden faced by many women in sub-Saharan Africa.
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spelling pubmed-85940392021-11-22 COVID-19 Pandemic Worsening Gender Inequalities for Women and Girls in Sub-Saharan Africa Ahinkorah, Bright Opoku Hagan, John Elvis Ameyaw, Edward Kwabena Seidu, Abdul-Aziz Schack, Thomas Front Glob Womens Health Global Women's Health Pandemics such as COVID-19 have often resulted in international, national and sub-regional crises, with considerable inequities across many societies. With the already existing structural and socio-economic inequalities in sub-Saharan Africa, the stay-at-home orders, lockdowns, and shutdowns across the sub-regional states could worsen and have a tremendous impact on vulnerable groups. Numerous studies across a variety of contexts have well-documented gender, and cultures on varied health outcomes. However, these have not been contextualized in sub-Saharan Africa in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic. This mini review discusses the ways by which COVID-19 has impacted the lives of girls and women across sub-Saharan Africa and the strategies that can help mitigate these challenges. The mini review specifically shares light on a wide array of dimensions where the inequities exist. These include the disproportionate areas affected by COVID-19; household inequities; educational inequalities; work/employment inequalities; disparities related to healthcare, sexual and reproductive health as well as housing inequities. Conclusively, the review accentuates the need for sub-Saharan African countries to adopt low-cost preventive measures such as discouraging mass gatherings (e.g., local community gatherings), and face masking with non-medical cloth like masks for the local populace as these are crucial in managing the spread of the virus among disproportionate women population. For localities with limited access to handwashing facilities, alternative strategies like alcohol-based hand rub solutions could be deployed. The complex interrelated disparities require a broad set of policy actions to lessen the current burden faced by many women in sub-Saharan Africa. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-07-29 /pmc/articles/PMC8594039/ /pubmed/34816232 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fgwh.2021.686984 Text en Copyright © 2021 Ahinkorah, Hagan, Ameyaw, Seidu and Schack. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Global Women's Health
Ahinkorah, Bright Opoku
Hagan, John Elvis
Ameyaw, Edward Kwabena
Seidu, Abdul-Aziz
Schack, Thomas
COVID-19 Pandemic Worsening Gender Inequalities for Women and Girls in Sub-Saharan Africa
title COVID-19 Pandemic Worsening Gender Inequalities for Women and Girls in Sub-Saharan Africa
title_full COVID-19 Pandemic Worsening Gender Inequalities for Women and Girls in Sub-Saharan Africa
title_fullStr COVID-19 Pandemic Worsening Gender Inequalities for Women and Girls in Sub-Saharan Africa
title_full_unstemmed COVID-19 Pandemic Worsening Gender Inequalities for Women and Girls in Sub-Saharan Africa
title_short COVID-19 Pandemic Worsening Gender Inequalities for Women and Girls in Sub-Saharan Africa
title_sort covid-19 pandemic worsening gender inequalities for women and girls in sub-saharan africa
topic Global Women's Health
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8594039/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34816232
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fgwh.2021.686984
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