The most serious obstacles to women’s health and their health rights are cultural, religious and social biases against women. These lead to barriers in accessing quality health information, education and services and inadequate allocation of governmental and donor resources. Lack of medical knowledge, for example, cannot be used to explain why women in developing countries in particular, continue to die unnecessarily from pregnancy and childbirth (estimated 580,000 global deaths annually) and from reproductive cancers for which sufficient scientific knowledge on prevention and treatment exists.
