How Covid-19 Threatens Women’s Access to Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare and How Mobile Technology Can Help
Women will be hit hardest by the Covid-19 pandemic, especially women in emerging markets. Access to services and information relating to sexual and reproductive health (SRH) are essential to women’s health and wellbeing, yet it remains grossly underfunded. With the current pandemic, the existing resources risk being diverted and the situation worsened. Now, more than ever, digital services specifically targeting women’s health can help bridge the access gap and provide invaluable resources to millions of women.
Even before the Covid-19 pandemic a majority of the world’s women lacked adequate access to sexual and reproductive healthcare. According to, WHO statistics from 2019, it is estimated that 13 % of maternal deaths globally are caused by unsafe abortions and that 7 million women in low- and middle-income countries are admitted to hospitals due to unsafe abortions every year. Still, many governments around the world do not consider reproductive health an essential service and it is often grossly underfunded. In addition, persistent social stigma around sexual and reproductive health makes the seeking of care shameful and under-prioritized by many women.
While these insights are alarming and frustrating, there are solutions that can move the needle on this issue and make a real difference to the lives of millions of women. Today, 1.9 billion women in low- and middle income-markets own their own phone and have a growing digital presence. At the same time, mobile technology, automation and artificial intelligence (AI) are starting to get sufficiently sophisticated to support the infrastructure needed to perform much of the basic care work as well as the educational and emotional support surrounding sexual and reproductive health. At Grace Health we have for some time been working at delivering the first-ever digital women’s health clinic aiming to give millions of women instant access to essential SRH services. Below we share three ways in which Covid-19 will affect women’s access to sexual and reproductive health and how digital health services, like ours, can help tackle the problem.
3 ways in which Covid-19 will disproportionately affect women’s access to sexual and reproductive health and how digital health services can help to alleviate this:
1. There will be limited or no access to contraceptives
All leading global suppliers of contraceptives will experience major shocks and disruptions to their supply chain well into the second half of 2020. Shortages as well as full-on stock-outs on everything from daily oral pills, IUDs, condoms, as well as emergency contraceptives and abortion medicines will become the norm for many months to come. One shouldn’t underestimate the mental tax this will have on women with not being able to protect oneself against unwanted pregnancies while remaining sexually active — a burden that typically falls on women. Moreover, data from China as well as France indicate that domestic violence and sexual abuse, which may include rape, has increased rapidly during the current outbreak. Beyond the fact that women have to fear for their lives in their own homes, the lack of abortion pills will be further detrimental to many women, who are subject on becoming unwillingly pregnant as a result of rape.
👉🏽 Digital health services improve fertility awareness for increased protection
Even during crises people won’t stop having sex and women will still experience cycle related symptoms or become pregnant. Despite the shortage of contraceptives, women can build awareness of their menstrual cycles and better understand how their fertility varies over the month. With our automated chat service Grace, women can, regardless of the current state and availability of public healthcare, track their period and fertility to understand when they are more or less fertile and to take appropriate precautions according to their wishes and needs.
2. Resources in already poor healthcare facilities will be further reduced
When a pandemic of this scale strikes, medical staff and resources should and have to be diverted to care for the most vulnerable groups. However, the consequences of this are hitting women twice. First of all, women make up a disproportionate share (70% globally, 90% in Hubei, China) of the the global health and social sector workers currently on the front lines of fighting the pandemic. Beyond this, in many emerging markets maternal and SRH services will be put under extreme capacity strains as resources and clinicians are diverted to fight the pandemic. Evidence from previous health crisis show that when maternal and SRH services are disrupted, the second order consequences can be staggering. According to evidence from the Ebola outbreak the number of women giving birth in hospitals and health clinics dropped by 30 percent and the maternal mortality rate increased by 75 percent during its rampage.
👉🏽 Digital health service give women control over their bodies and health even when the physical healthcare system around them is weak, unstable or broken
Even when investments in SRH are weak and under additional strain as is happening currently, digital healthcare tools are both accessible and scalable. They give every women with a phone access to self-tracking and self-care. This way, women can keep track of their symptoms and, as in the case of Grace, be alerted when a condition needs medical attention.
3. The time and space for self-care will be non-existent
Even without a pandemic or a major health crisis like the Covid-19, 75 percent of all unpaid household and care work is carried out by women. As we have now seen countries go in to either full lockdown or give strong recommendations to stay at home, the burden of care work falling on women will increase further. For a majority of women, a home filled with children, family members and perhaps even sick ones, means that the time for self-care or sanitary needs is crowded out. Coupled with the fact that the possibility of discreetly seeking care outside the home is very limited, women’s access to sexual and reproductive care and information will be severely reduced.
👉🏽 Digital health services are instant, private and around the clock
With digital health services, women have 24/7 access to self-care and information. They are available directly from her bedroom, during bathroom visits or when shopping for food. In addition, technology has the advantage of circumventing existent stigma around sexual and reproductive health allowing health information and care to be delivered in a neutral and non-judgmental way. When surveying our users, the two main reasons for using Grace as a tool for self-tracking and education is precisely that it is instant and friendly.
To Summarize, while digital health cannot serve as a substitute to physical health services it can serve as a complement to help bridge the resource and knowledge gap, especially in times of crisis. Furthermore, the social and accessible character of mobile technology, gives it yet another advantage over traditional healthcare in that it can quickly disseminate new and rapidly changing information. In a health crisis like the current one this is absolutely crucial. That is the reason why we at Grace Health have added content specifically related to Covid-19 into our chat. This brings up-to-date and easily digestible information into each Grace user’s home and phone.
Finally, healthcare is not a one way street — in addition to providing care and information, it is also about allowing people and especially women to have an outlet to share their needs and to be listened to. Grace has ongoing and intimate conversations with 300 000 women around the world which means that we can in real time collect aggregated data on what she needs, what symptoms are most common and what she is worried about. This is the true revolution of digitizing women’s health, to improve the lives of billions of women worldwide!
