Ebola Outbreak Hitting Women Harder Than Men (453 hits)
New stats have found that a disproportionate amount of women have been infected with the Ebola virus. Both men and women are being hit by the disease, but the difference in who is getting the brunt of this outbreak is staggering! According to UNICEF, women account for 55 to 60 percent of the 1,552 deaths from Ebola inGuinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone since May. However, The Washington Post reports that health teams on the ground in Liberia report much higher numbers with women making up 75 percent of the people who have been infected.
Some are pointing to women’s penchant for nurturing as the main factor behind the disparity. Ebola is transmitted through direct contact with an infected person’s blood, tissues and bodily fluids. It is not airborne. This, when coupled with the fact that women make up the majority of caregivers, is huge reason why the disease has hit females the hardest. The first lady of Sierra Leone, Sia Nyama Koroma broke it down this way to The Post, “Women are the caregivers. If a kid is sick they say, ‘Go to your mom.'”
MUST READ: Ebola Is Now An ‘International Health Emergency,’ Here’s What You Should Know About The Virus Executive Director of the Women’ NGO Secretariat Liberia Marpue Spear said this mentality about gender roles is also what’s keeping more men from situations where they could risk infection. “If a man is sick, the woman can easily bathe him, but the man cannot do so,” Marpue told Foreign Policy. “Traditionally, women will take care of the men as compared to them taking care of the women.”
