The significance of women’s health

The core significance of women's health has never been "women's own private affairs", but the core fulcrum that anchors the quality of individual life, the order of family operations, and the vitality of social development. From the daily stability of a family of three to the intergenerational well-being of an entire ethnic group, they are essentially directly bound to the level of women's health.

Last month, when I was doing a free women's health clinic in the community, I met a 38-year-old mother of two children. She stopped by with a vegetable basket for consultation. She said that she had been having heavy menstruation for almost half a year, and she often felt dizzy after standing for a long time, but she never took it seriously. I have to pick up my two children from school every day and cook for my parents-in-law. My husband is away on projects all year round and really can’t spare time to go to the hospital. The hemoglobin level was only 7g, which meant she was already moderately anemic. A B-ultrasound revealed a five-centimeter uterine fibroid, which required surgery as soon as possible. Her face turned pale at the time, and her first words were, "Who will pick up my baby these days?" Later, during the week when she was hospitalized, the whole family was in chaos: the eldest son, who was in elementary school, went to a neighbor's house for three days to eat, the second son, who was in kindergarten, was temporarily sent to his grandmother's house, and the mother-in-law, who already had high blood pressure, was anxious to stay in the hospital for three days.

Don't think that this is just a special case of one family. I have been doing health education at the grassroots level over the years and have seen too many examples like this: many women default to ranking their own health needs last in the family. No matter how much they are calculated, they can't squeeze out the hundreds of yuan for their annual physical examination. It is not until a small problem turns into a big problem that the main axis of the entire family is turned upside down, and everyone's life will be disordered.

Regarding the priority of women's health, there have always been different voices in the academic community. The traditional public health school's view is more practical. It is believed that under the premise of limited resources, women's health investment should give priority to fertility-related fields: such as pre-pregnancy folic acid supplementation, maternal health care, breast and cervical cancer screening. After all, this part of the investment has the fastest effect and can directly reduce maternal and neonatal mortality. But in recent years, more and more women's health researchers have put forward different views: We cannot just treat women as "reproductive carriers", women's health should cover the entire life cycle - a 13-year-old girl dared not ask for leave because of dysmenorrhea and could only squat in the classroom corridor and sweat, and a 25-year-old girl A working girl suffers from polycystic ovary syndrome due to long-term overtime work. A 40-year-old woman has been troubled by postpartum depression for more than ten years and dare not talk about it. A 55-year-old woman in menopausal age has hot flashes and insomnia and only dares to carry it by herself, thinking that "it will be over if you tolerate it." These health needs that have nothing to do with childbearing are also worthy of attention.

I was chatting with the gynecologist Dr. Zhang who worked with me a while ago. She complained that there are more and more 20-year-old girls in the outpatient clinic with polycystic cysts. Many of them stay up late for several months to catch up on projects. They don’t take it seriously if their periods don’t come for two or three months. They think they can handle it at a young age, and they wait until they are ready to get pregnant before rushing to take care of it. In fact, if you adjust your work and rest early and use some medication to intervene, you don’t have to suffer from the consequences later.

Don’t think that this is just a small matter for an individual. From the perspective of the entire society, women’s health carries a much higher weight than many people think. According to statistics from the World Health Organization: for every US$1 increase in investment in women's health in developing countries, the corresponding return on social productivity can reach US$7-10, which is much higher than the input-output ratio in many other fields. Two years ago, we went to a mountain village in the west to provide assistance. We conducted free cancer screenings for all women aged 18-60 in the village. Three cases of early-stage cervical cancer were detected, and all were cured with surgery in time. When I went back last year, the elder sisters took the lead in setting up an e-commerce live broadcast to sell local mushrooms and wild products, which helped the whole village earn more than 200,000 yuan in one year. One of the elder sisters said that if it had not been found out before and delayed to the advanced stage, let alone making money, no one would care about the elderly and children at home.

Of course, many people have questioned it, saying that the overwhelming “women’s health” propaganda is essentially a trap of consumerism. This statement is really not groundless: I have seen too many IQ taxes in the name of women's health, such as personal care gels that "detoxify", ovary maintenance essential oils that can delay aging through massage, and sky-high-priced Internet celebrity health products that claim to replenish qi and blood. Many women have spent tens of thousands of dollars, but in the end they have problems with their bodies. But on the other hand, we cannot deny the value of women's health just because of these chaos. Real women's health never requires you to pay an IQ tax. Spending several hundred yuan every year on a routine gynecological examination, staying up less late, and buying some ordinary iron supplements when you are deficient in iron is much more useful than buying health care products worth thousands of yuan.

In the final analysis, the meaning of women's health ultimately depends on each specific person. The mother who had undergone uterine fibroid surgery last month came for a follow-up checkup. She looked much better and said that she and her husband had agreed that now he would pick up the baby and cook for her after work on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays every Monday, and she would go to the community square to dance square dancing on two nights. She no longer had to do everything by herself like before. Before leaving, she stuffed me with a can of pickled cucumbers she made, saying that now she understands that only when she feels better can the whole family be at ease.

There is no grand meaning. To put it bluntly: you no longer have to endure menstrual cramps to rush for reports, you don’t have to save money for physical examinations to enroll your children in interest classes, and you don’t have to think that the irritability of menopause is your own "hypocrisy". If you take good care of yourself, you are supporting the whole family and even the whole society.