In rural Haiti, women experience unique health care challenges and are more likely to be diagnosed with certain diseases than men. Regarding women’s health, Haiti lags behind all its neighboring countries in the Caribbean and Latin America. For women living in rural Haiti, it is even worse since the majority doesn’t have access to the most health care. Chronic diseases and conditions such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes remain undiagnosed while they represent the leading cause of death among these women.

While our main priority is women’s health, we’re aware that boys and men in rural deal with serious diseases problems as well. Nonetheless, it is very plausible that gender remains an important social determinant of health. Women's health in rural Haiti is not just influenced by their biology but also by conditions such as poverty, employment, and family responsibilities, single as many men leave the countryside in search of work in the major cities, into the Domain Republic, the Bahamas, Brazil, Chile and North America. With ongoing rural exodus where the male workforce is outsourced, everything rests upon the women. As the saying goes in rural Haiti “when mamma is ill, so is the whole household.”

 

What really determines how health problems affect women in rural Haiti is women's reproductive and sexual health. Women’s reproductive health encompasses maternal heath, sexual health, infertility, menstrual cycle, child marriages. Moreover, pregnancy and childbirth are associated with substantial risks to women with maternal mortality accounting for thousands of deaths mostly in rural Haiti. Other health issues associated with comorbidity from other non-reproductive diseases, such as cardiovascular disease, contribute to both the mortality and morbidity of pregnancy, including preeclampsia. While all women in Haiti are affected by these issues, those who reside in underserved communities, rural areas in particular, are the most at-risk population. It is even worse from women living in remotes villages located five to seven hours’ walk from the nearest and often ill-equipped health clinic. In other words, these villages are not reachable even by all-terrain vehicles.

 

Sexually transmitted infections have serious consequences for women and infants, with mother-to-child transmission leading to outcomes such as stillbirths and neonatal deaths, and pelvic inflammatory disease leading to infertility. In addition, infertility from many other causes, birth control, unplanned pregnancy, nonconsensual sexual activity and the struggle for access to abortion create other burdens for rural women. Other reproductive and sexual health issues we are addressing in rural Haiti include sex education, puberty, sexuality and sexual function. These girls and women also experience several issues related to the health of their breasts and genital tract, which fall into the scope of gynecology.