AUB Conference on the absence of legal regulations and its impact on ethics in women’s health

According to Dr. Talia Araoui, the Director of The Salim El-Hoss Bioethics and Professionalism Program (SHBPP) at AUBMC, women still face a number of health challenges in the Arab region, namely, early marriage, rape, female genital mutilation, aesthetic surgery, hymen reconstruction, violence, and neglect of elderly women.  Women have lesser opportunities to access health and medical care and are prone to exploitation during conflict and disasters.  This raid review was part of Dr. Araoui presentation at the scientific convention on Bioethics of women’s issue which was organized last week with support from the UNESCO office in Cairo and AUB Faculty of Health Sciences.  To be noted that this is the first conference of The Bioethics Network on Women’s Issues in the Arab region (Binwiar), which includes institutions and researchers from various part of the Arab region and working on issues related to ethics and women’s health in the Arab region.
In his intervention, Dr. Adnan Mroueh who specializes in obstetrics and gynecology, spoke of the problems that are likely to threaten women’s health in the future namely poor nutrition, drought, emergence of new diseases, increased resistance of germs strains, obesity, smoking, increase in caesarian birth. He also considered that the mother mortality rate in Arab countries is still high, while the fertility rate decreased from 7 in 1960 to 3.3 in 2002.
Faysal Kak, also specialized in obstetrics and gynecology, spoke of the legal framework and noted that Arab countries lack legislations that address complex issues related to the ethics of women’s health such as medical complications, techniques related to birth, in vitro fertilization, contraception, sexual awareness covering also STDs, choosing the sex of the fetus, etc…  Kak added that whereas most Arab countries had agreed to the universal declaration on bioethics and human rights which was adopted during the UNESCO conference of 2005, none has actually worked towards developing its legislative framework so as to be on par with the international dialogue on this issue whilst the religious discourse still dominates this arena.
Source: Al-Safir 11 February 2014