When Kenyan Agnes Wachire felt pain in her chest almost six months ago, the mother of three dismissed it as the result of her daily laborious hand-washing of clothes in the alleys of Nairobi's Kawangwara neighborhood.
Over the months, the pain grew into a persistent tightness in her chest that often left her breathless.
However, with inflation in Kenya hitting a five-year high of 8,5 percent, the 48-year-old single mother says she cannot afford to seek medical help, writes the Thomson Reuters Foundation (TRF).
"Going to the doctor is not an option," Vachira, who earns about 1.500 Kenyan shillings ($12,46) a week, told TRF by phone.
"I don't have health insurance and I can't afford medicine, and the high price of fuel means that even paying for transport to the hospital is too expensive."
From Kenya and Lebanon to Sri Lanka and Britain, the rising cost of living caused by the war in Ukraine and the Covid-19 pandemic is increasing gender inequality, women's rights activists say.
Women are forced to neglect their own health in order to meet family needs as inflation reduces household budgets, they point out and warn that the situation will further worsen as many countries introduce austerity measures.
Wangari Kinoti of the international charity ActionAid says all aspects of women's health are at risk.
"What we see happening is that women end up cutting back on the number and quality of meals they eat each day, and forgoing essential health care - such as maternal health care and menstrual products - to buy food," Kinoti said. .
"With less food available, women and girls become the 'shock absorbers' of the household, meaning they end up eating the last and least, with serious health and nutritional impacts, especially for pregnant and breastfeeding women," she added.
Economic shocks
Charities say the global cost-of-living crisis has disproportionately affected women, who typically earn less than men and take on more unpaid household responsibilities.
Poor households are struggling to recover from income losses and mounting debts due to the Covid-19 pandemic and cannot withstand further economic shocks such as a spike in inflation, women's rights activists say.
In Africa, for example, 58 million people are at risk of slipping into poverty due to the combined effects of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, according to the United Nations.
"Women are at a disadvantage because of long-standing gender inequality," said Caroline Derry of the Catholic Relief Services organization in Ghana.
"They're less likely to be in a well-paid job, more likely to be a carer, so it's not surprising that they're the first to sacrifice their health," added Deri, who focuses on women's health.
In Lebanon, where the pound has lost more than 90 percent of its value, food prices have increased more than 11 times, and over 80 percent of the population has fallen below the poverty line, women struggle to pay for expensive sexual and reproductive health care services, writes TRF.
The price of birth control pills, for example, has increased by more than 600 percent since 2019.
Karin, 26, who works as a translator in Beirut, said she could no longer afford the pills she was taking to treat the hormone disorder polycystic ovary syndrome. Oral contraceptive costs amount to 12 percent of her monthly earnings.
"This is too much for me financially because I have to buy food for the child. If I buy pills, it would mean less food for my child”.
The impact of austerity measures
In Sri Lanka, where inflation has reached more than 60 percent, 49-year-old Siti Patima can no longer afford treatment for Stevens-Johnson syndrome, a rare, serious disorder that causes blistering and peeling skin that has affected her eyesight.
The widow with two children, who has no health insurance, stopped going to a private hospital for treatment almost a year ago after costs began to rise to 15.000 Sri Lankan rupees ($41,67) a month.
"My vision started to improve during treatment," Patima told the Thomson Reuters Foundation from her home in the capital, Colombo.
"But both my girls go to school, and we support ourselves only from my husband's pension. Travel and medical expenses were too much. My eyelids are now glued shut and I can't see anything."
TRF writes that women's health bears the brunt of the cost of living crisis in developed countries as well. Studies conducted in Britain - where inflation has reached 9,9 percent - revealed that women are also being forced to make tough decisions.
Research conducted in June by the charity Young Women's Trust revealed that 30 percent of young mothers sometimes go hungry so their children can eat. That percentage rose to 58 percent of single mothers.
Gender activists warn that the health situation for women in many countries is likely to worsen as cash-strapped governments try to rein in spending to pay back debt incurred during the pandemic.
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