WI cricket and women’s health

THE EDITOR: Like almost all real Caribbean citizens I take great delight in the slightest hint or resurgence of our competitive capacity in cricket. I love it when we show character and struggle, when we perform well and, of course, I am thrilled to the bone when we win. Ardent cricket fan that I am, I am puzzled at the enormous difference in how our media treats cricket and something else that is very clear to me, women’s reproductive health.

Win, lose draw or tie, there are editorials and letters in the media day after day about cricket — about the board, about the selectors, about the coaches about the captain and about the players. And this is all in addition to the special Sports sections where we see or hear detailed descriptions and dissections of the public performance on the field. This is what feeds high performance. Everything is public and challenged. Not so for women’s reproductive health. Why? Our government gets away with avoiding a discussion of women’s reproductive health. Professionals, lawyers and doctors, ignore the issue. Most people are silent. Women are harmed in their thousands year after year. No one cares. We yearn to the world standard in cricket and are indifferent to being substandard in women’s health. Unless we can apply similar tough, objective measurement criteria, the same openness, the same intolerance for sloppiness, the same insistence on high performance, and demand the same levels of accountability we are doomed to remain stuck in the low standards in which we wallow today. How is it that we take such joy in men’s triumph in their world and yet they remain so indifferent to our suffering?

JERSEY MAHARAJ
Carapichaima