Source: Coast Week
More than one third of all women globally fall victims to physical or sexual violence, said a new report released Thursday by World Health Organization (WHO)

in partnership with the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and the South African Medical Research Council.

 

The report, named as Global and Regional Estimates of Violence Against Women: Prevalence and Health Effects of Intimate Partner Violence and Non-partner Sexual Violence, was the first systematic global study on the prevalence of violence against women, the significant public health problem, according to WHO.

 

Having focused on two forms of violence against women - physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence and non-partner sexual violence, the first-ever global report in this regard found out that some 35 percent of women worldwide have experienced the above two kinds of violence, with the intimate violence as the most prevalent form.

 

It detailed the detriments of these violence practices to physical and mental health of women, having brought attention to the health impacts imposed by the violence by an intimate partner which ranged from the affected women’s death and injury, depression, alcohol use problems, sexually transmitted infections, unwanted pregnancy and abortion to low birth-weight babies.

 

As for non-partner sexual violence, in spite of obstacles to data collection such as fear of stigma, the report managed to find out that this form of violence caused victims to more likely have alcohol disorders and suffer depression or anxiety.

 

Based on available data, the report arrived at the conclusions that as for the combined intimate partner violence and non-partner sexual violence or both among all women of 15 years or older, the Africa saw the highest prevalence rate:45.6 percent, followed by Americas (36.1 percent); as for intimate partner violence, the worst affected region was South-East Asia (37.7 percent prevalence), followed by Eastern Mediterranean (37 percent prevalence) and Africa (36.6 percent prevalence).

 

“These findings send a powerful message that violence against women is a global health problem of epidemic proportions,” said Margaret Chan, Director-General of WHO in a written statement.

 

The report called for increased efforts across a range of sectors to prevent violence against women, and also to provide essential services for women affected.

 

Moreover, the report called for the health sector to play a greater role.

 

“We also see that the world’s health systems can and must do more for women who experience violence,” said Margaret Chan in the statement.

 

In the new guidelines launched by WHO along with the above report and aimed to help countries improve their health sectors’ capacity to respond to violence against women, health-care providers were guided to give appropriate responses to female victims, including clinical interventions and emotional support.

 

The new guidelines emphasized the urgency to integrate issues related to violence into clinical training and the importance of raising all health-care providers’ awareness of the relationship between exposure to violence and women’s ill health so as to make appropriate responses.