Suresh Kishanrao*

Public Health Consultant and Visiting Professor-MPH, Karnataka State Rural Development and Panchayat Raj University, Gadag, Karnataka, India

*Corresponding Author: Suresh Kishanrao, Public Health Consultant and Visiting Professor-MPH, Karnataka State Rural Development and Panchayat Raj University, Gadag, Karnataka, India.

Received: September 21, 2021; Published: November 29, 2021

Abstract

Sex and gender both play a role in the epidemiology of almost all communicable and non-communicable diseases. The incidence, prevalence, access to health care services, care seeking behaviour, diagnostic facilities, hospitalization, case management and the outcomes are affected by both sex and gender. COVID-19 has been no different in last 18 months and will continue to do so. Covid 19 Pandemic has reaffirmed to the world the fact that health is not driven just by biology, but also by social environment of which gender is a major part.

An individual’s sex -biological make-up, determines both immunological and hormonal profiles that may be important in responding to infection. As of now it is believed that ACE2 (enzyme 2) an enzyme is important in the risk of developing severe COVID19 disease. Levels of ACE2 are generally higher in men, leading to men’s higher risk of severe COVID outcomes and death. ACE2 sits on cell membranes and may allow the virus to enter cells more easily, and hence begin its destructive pathway through the body’s vital organs.

The Gender plays more important role in developing countries like India in determining i) risk of exposure to environments and products that might be unhealthy (house sweeping, mopping, and cleaning and thus exposure to pollution, cooking and indoor smoking, patterns and timing of health service use, access services (testing, diagnosis, treatment), the level and quality of care that a person receives in the primary health care facilities.

In India the death of one in four women was never counted as against the gap of one in six among men even before the Pandemic. The gender divide in death registration has been worsening from a 6-percentage point difference in 2009 to 11 percentage points in 2018 reports. The gender discrimination in seeking care, hospitalization and health insurance is also well known. The routine reported data of all programs at National, States and districts levels show such gender bias of blindness.

COVID-19 Sex-Disaggregated Data Tracker (Globalhealth5050.org/the-sex-gender-and-covid-19-project) offers the most comprehensive country-level reporting of sex-disaggregated data. This article attempts to review the prevailing gender specific information of various components of Covid 19 management and the need for desegregated information for a better understanding of the various indicators.

Materials and Methods: The review uses the available gender desegregated data from various sources like GOI, WHO, State Governments, Global health 5050 Covid 19 disaggregated data tracker, Print media and a few anecdotal studies.

Keywords: Covid 19 Sex Specific Data; Case Fatality Rate; Cases and Deaths Per Lakh Population; CPHC; UHC; Health and Welfare Centres

References

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Citation

Citation: Suresh Kishanrao. “Covid 19 Reaffirms that Health is Not Driven Just by Biology, But Also, by the Social Environment in Relation to Women-globally". Acta Scientific Women's Health 3.12 (2021): 33-44.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2021 Suresh Kishanrao. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.