“The world is at risk of losing millions of women and children due to reductions in coverage of essential services, reversing hard-earned progress towards the SDGs [Sustainable Development Goals] to date and posing catastrophic consequences for households and communities,” said Dr. Koki Agarwal, Project Director of the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) MOMENTUM Country and Global Leadership award, at a recent event on the importance of ensuring continuity of maternal, newborn, and child health services, voluntary family planning, and reproductive health care during the COVID-19 pandemic. The event was the first in a series of virtual country knowledge exchange discussions organized by USAID’s MOMENTUM Country and Global Leadership, led by Jhpiego and partners.

With the arrival of COVID-19, countries are experiencing disruptions of health services of all kinds— health workers have been redeployed, supplies already in short stock are even more difficult to find, scarce financial resources for health are being reallocated, and routine health services are less, if at all, available. COVID-19 is causing facilities to lockdown in some settings, in part because many providers lack sufficient personal protective equipment (PPE) to safely provide services. At the same time, many clients—particularly those seeking family planning and reproductive health (FP/RH) services—cannot access services at all. This is due to a confluence of factors: police action is preventing movement; facilities are shutting their doors; many people are fearful of contracting the virus; in some cases, women are forbidden from leaving their homes by a partner. 

COVID-19 is having a profound impact on Latin American women. Gender-based violence increased drastically after governments imposed lockdowns, leaving policymakers and law enforcement scrambling to prevent attacks. Latin America was already one of the most dangerous regions for women, with the highest rate of sexual violence and some of the highest femicide numbers in the world. The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean registered 3,529 femicides in 2018, or one woman killed every two hours due to her gender. For many women living through the coronavirus pandemic in Latin America, the greater health risk might be staying home.

Since the onset of the pandemic, nurses and midwives have been asked in some facilities to work without personal protective equipment. Nurses have been sent home and lost their jobs simply because they insisted on following evidence-based practices, such as wearing masks. Some question whether the masks, gloves, gowns, and other commodities in short supply are more important than nurses who question the ethics of showing up when essentials aren’t available.

“While COVID-19 has wreaked havoc the world over, history has proven, and recent data agrees that the hardest hit will be the world’s women and girls and populations already impacted by racism and discrimination,” said Sarah Barnes, Project Director of the Maternal Health Initiative and Women and Gender Advisor at the Wilson Center, at a recent event on the impact of COVID-19 on race and gender inequities. Coronavirus has hurt women and girls in many ways. Among them, women have been pushed back into the home.  And healthcare workers and caregivers who are mostly women are jeopardizing their own health, caring for others.

“Today is the International Day of the Midwife, a day when we come together as a global health community to celebrate midwives, and the commitment of the midwifery profession globally to saving lives and upholding the rights of women to a safe and positive birth,” write the authors of the Global Call to Action: Protecting Midwives to Sustain Care for Women, Newborns and their Families in the COVID-19 Pandemic. Midwives are essential to the health and protection of women and newborns. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 83 percent of all maternal deaths, stillbirths, and newborn deaths could be averted with the full package of midwifery care.