A study of 28 African countries including Guinea, Mauritius and Uganda showed that on average women accounted for a slightly smaller proportion of coronavirus infections and deaths compared to men.<\/p>\n
Overall around 41 percent of reported Covid-19 cases were women, although the figures ranged widely from 31 percent in Niger to more than 57 percent in South Africa.<\/p>\n
“In most countries, women are somewhat less likely to die from Covid-19 than men,” World Health Organization (WHO) regional director for Africa Matshidiso Moeti told an online news conference.<\/p>\n
But the pandemic had exposed gaps in health services, with women suffering the brunt of disrupted access to care.<\/p>\n
“There was a rise in maternal deaths in 10 countries,” Moeti said, making reference to another study that collated data between February and July 2020.<\/p>\n
The highest jumps were recorded in the Comoros, Mali, Senegal and South Africa. <\/p>\n
Access to sexual and reproductive care was already poor on the continent before coronavirus hit. <\/p>\n
But access was made worse by restrictions to stem the spread of Covid-19, pushing more women to seek risky informal abortions, Moeti explained.<\/p>\n
Overstretched hospitals were often unable to see patients seeking non-coronavirus related services, she added. <\/p>\n
More data is still needed to determine the full extent of the effect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{Women in Africa are less likely to die from Covid-19 than men, but more likely to succumb to maternal complications due to limited access to reproductive services since the pandemic started, the UN said Thursday citing reports.}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[75],"byline":[228],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-43009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","tag-homenews","byline-afp"],"bylines":[{"id":228,"name":"AFP","slug":"afp","description":"Agence France-Presse is an international news agency headquartered in Paris. It is the oldest news agency in the world and one of the largest. ","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":71}],"contributors":[{"id":228,"name":"AFP","slug":"afp","description":"Agence France-Presse is an international news agency headquartered in Paris. It is the oldest news agency in the world and one of the largest. ","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":71}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/62"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43009\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43009"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=43009"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=43009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}