In a country like India, where most part of the country, portable water
is a distance dream, the linkages between the health and poverty is
increasingly visible (Qadeer, 1995), the caste-class divides have been
identified as key aspect of existing inequalities in access to healthcare
(Baneerji, 1982).
National Sample Survey data indicates that expenditure on
health care is the second most common cause for the rural indebtedness, despite
of claims of success in immunization, but 200,000 infants die every year of
tetanus, almost 65 percent of all death among women are caused by disease group
that are predominantly infectious in nature and only 2.5% of death are related
to childbirth, 28.6 percent of death among them are caused by major infectious
disease like TB, malaria, cholera, pneumonia, dysentery, jaundice and 12.5 %
deaths are due to childbirth and condition associated with it. Despite this
reality, the only communicable disease that is emphasized is HIV/AIDS. Even
here its link with poor health system, is not adequately emphasized.
The health issue in India, specially, the women health has been
recognized an important factor, in which education is positive variable for
promoting better health to women. Even taking this consideration in evaluating
the overall spectrum of women health, the simple conclusion is that the half of
the total population of women in India would remain unhealthy and unable to
cooperate because there is still half of the Indian women are not educated. The
challenge in macro perspective is complex to resolve but the micro perspective
also provides the complex picture but, here is the scope of possibility to
understand the issue of women health in better dimension.
When we analyze the data available in the NHFS- 3 clearly shows that, there
are 41% women having no education, 23% having more than 8 years of educational
exposure and 14% women are in between 8 to 9 years of educational exposure.
When we relate this figure with the educational attainment or completion of
number of years in the educational institute with the understanding about the
health related issue, the basic question comes in our mind is that is
educational content really covers the topic of women health in the school in
India?
The health related issues in school level educational content in India
hardly provide the prevalent health challenges in the Indian society and the
covering women health issues in the school or adding in the educational
curriculum in India, is still a social taboo especially in the government run schools.
The quality of education is one of the major concerns in India. In the
prevailing scenario, the idea of education with the better women health needs
to be studied in micro and household perspective. This is one of the major
indicators which shape the women health in the lifelong spectrum. The household
is not simply a unit, but consists with ‘production, consumption, residence,
reproduction, socialization or combination all these.
Besides these, the household is the immediate health environment of its
members, who share water source, sanitation facilities, breathing space, a
hearth, and other facilities’ (Meera Chaterjee, 1989). There is further
differentiation within the household on the basis of gender, age, role and so
on. The heterogeneity of the prevailing circumstances within a particular
location has important implication for health because there is different set of
standard and norm prevails in this dimension.
