Women should not be propping up healthcare systems without proper pay

When I first arrived to work in Pakistan in 1989, I would regularly visit villages where mothers had died in childbirth, often with their newborns. The health system just didn’t reach that far.

I had arrived in Pakistan with my own young baby and we were both healthy. Because the health system reached us.

The previous year a young female Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, had replaced a military dictator. She asked how health services could reach women in remote, conservative communities. 

So, in 1994 the Lady Health Workers Programme was launched. For the first time in Pakistan, the health system reached women just about everywhere.

For 20 years, on and off, I watched those women become the backbone of the health system, battling low pay, dealing with harassment, and travelling long distances on foot. Sometimes they weren’t paid at all.

Article originally posted on Thompson Reuters Foundation News