Preface
In October 1989, the International Women's Health Coalition sponsored the panel, "Special Challenges in Third World Women's Health" at the Annual Meeting of the American Public Health Association. The panel focused on several issues critical to women's health, which have recieved too little attention. Throughout the Third World, we have found women to be deeply concerned about reproductive tract infections, cervical cancer and contraceptive safety. It is their sense, and ours, that these issues need prority attention by their own governments and by international agencies. Since each presentation generated considerable discussion, we decided to publish them in March 1990. Demand for the report has been high, and since we continue to recieve a steady number of requests for copies, we are issuing a reprint of our publication.
During the past twenty months, IWHC has undertaken a number of activities to increase knowledge of reproductive tract infections among those concerned with international health policy and programs. We published Dr. Judith Wasserheit's groundbreaking article, "The Significance and Scope of Reproductive Tract Infections Among Third World Women," in The International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics, a special supplement of the journal based on the proceedings of the Christopher Tietze International Symposium. Other activites have included the publication of a major report, The Culture of Silence: Reproductive Tract Infections Among Women in the Third World by Drs. Ruth Dixon-Mueller and Judith Wasserhelt, in 1991. Copies of these publications may be obtained from IWHC.
We have also co-sponsored with the Rockefeller Foundation, an international conference, "Reproductive Tract Infections in the Third World: National and International Policy Implications," in Bellagio, Italy in May 1991. Thirteen papers were commissioned from leading experts to provide crucial data and to discuss program and policy implications. In 1992, Plenum press will publish these papers as a book and IWHC will publish a report of the Conference. Most recently, we sponsored a panel on reproductive tract infections at the Annual Meeting of the National Council for International Health with panelists Dr. Rani Bang from India, Dr. Hind Abou Khattab from Egypt, Dr. Elizabeth Ngugi from Kenya, and Dr. Inne Susanti from Indonesia.
We hope these initatives will encourage you to address these critical issues. We welcome your questions, requests for publications, and comments.
Joan B. Dunlop, President
Adrienne Germain, Vice President
International Women's Health Coalition
New York, NY, September 1991
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