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The Ongoing Fight for Safety, Equality, and Health

Wanda Neal couldn’t take her husband’s jealousy and bad temper anymore, so she left him. Two weeks later, he showed up at the nursing home where she worked, carrying three guns through the halls as he hunted for her. Neal was working on a locked ward and survived the incident, but not before her husband had gunned down eight people in the nursing home, including a nurse and seven elderly residents.

Stories like this should spur us to action, says IntraHealth International’s Constance Newman. It’s an example of the kind of gender-based violence that affects everyone, but especially women and girls. Every day, it leads to a devastating loss of liberty, equality, and health. And in some cases, it leads to a loss of life.

At IntraHealth, our work of empowering health workers around the world intersects with gender violence more often than you might think. Health workers must be able to screen their patients for signs of violence and provide victims with the appropriate care and referrals. Health workers can be victims, at work or in their personal lives. And, in some cases, they can be perpetrators.

In honor of this year’s 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence Campaign, the North Carolina-based Triangle Global Health Consortium ran a series of blog entries by local experts and activists on topics that span the globe.

Take a look: