Every Crisis Is a Women's Health Crisis

When the world falls apart—through war, climate disaster, disease, or systemic injustice—women are the first to suffer, and the last to be heard. Their bodies bear the brunt. Their rights vanish first. Their pain is overlooked. And while the headlines move on, the fallout on female health endures for generations.

This isn’t just a failure of health systems. It’s a failure of priorities. Because if there’s one truth we keep ignoring, it’s this: every crisis is a women’s health crisis.

And until we start acting like it, we will keep rebuilding broken systems on broken backs.

Women Are Always in the Firing Line

More than 75% of people displaced by war or disaster are women and children. Girls are 2.5 times more likely than boys to drop out of school in conflict zones. And women in crisis settings are routinely denied access to the care they need—not by accident, but because their health has never been treated as essential.

In Sudan, as hospitals collapse and basic medical supplies run out, women are being forced to give birth in unsanitary conditions. Globally, one in two maternal deaths occurs in conflict zones.

Let that sink in.

UNDP is working in places like Yemen, Gaza, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo to restore maternal healthcare and rebuild broken systems. But the truth is, we are plugging holes in a sinking ship—because these women were never at the centre of our design to begin with.

Her Health, Our Collective Immunity

The same conditions that put pregnant women at risk—unsafe water, lack of sanitation, overwhelmed clinics—are the very same ones that make entire communities vulnerable to deadly disease.

In Haiti and Yemen, we’re supporting surveillance systems, community-led education, and WASH (water, sanitation, and hygiene) programmes. Because when we protect women, we protect everyone. Women’s health isn’t niche. It’s public health.

Climate Chaos Has a Gender—and It’s Female

From rising temperatures to toxic air, the climate crisis is a direct assault on women’s health. Air pollution increases risk of breast cancer, heart disease, asthma, and pregnancy complications—including miscarriage and postpartum depression. And yet, where is the investment in protecting female bodies from climate fallout?

In Peru, we’re fighting back with clean energy entrepreneurship. Women in rural communities are being trained to install and manage solar panels and clean cookstoves—improving health, cutting emissions, and opening up new economic futures. That’s what real climate justice looks like: women leading solutions, not absorbing consequences.

And Then There’s the Quiet Crisis: Discrimination

Not all threats come with floods or bombs. Some arrive quietly—in the form of rising misogyny, shrinking freedoms, and eroded rights.

Across the world, women are being denied access to reproductive healthcare. They’re being barred from leaving home without male permission. Laws are tightening. Healthcare is politicized. And the cost is women’s lives.

In Kazakhstan, UNDP has been training law enforcement to recognise and reduce stigma against marginalised women—those living with HIV, sex workers, and others routinely excluded from care. In Montenegro, we’re working to end institutional discrimination by strengthening grassroots feminist organisations and pushing for real policy reform.

Because freedom isn’t just a right—it’s a health issue.

No More Afterthoughts

We need to stop treating women’s health as a footnote in crisis response plans or a side note in policy budgets. It must be the starting point. The core. The foundation.

Because when women are healthy, whole, and supported, families thrive. Economies grow. Communities become more resilient to future shocks.

We cannot build a stronger world on the backs of unwell women. And we will not wait patiently while our health is sacrificed to maintain the status quo.

So let this World Health Day be more than a hashtag.

Let it be the moment we finally say: her body, her health, her life—at the centre, not the sidelines.

Note: Information published by https://www.undp.org/