Ross Frankson

Sounds Women's Health Alarm

Joan Ross Frankson

Jamaican-born Joan Ross Frankson, information chief for the Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO) recently visited London to raise the alarm about women's health and environmental issues around the globe. She alerted journalists and public opinion leaders to WEDO's report of a 50-country assessment of Risks, Rights and Reforms.

The report shows that "privatisation trends have reduced access to health services by the poor, with special impact on women, the elderly, and immigrant and minority populations."

Ardent women's activist
Ross Frankson spent her formative years in Britain and says many of the report's findings have relevance for African Caribbean women and minority ethnic communities in inner London areas. Whilst here she also met with her prize-winning literary daughter Leone Ross, and family and friends.

Taking her work at WEDO as a serious commitment, Ms Ross Frankson is dedicated "to improving the quality of women's health". She supports WEDO's efforts to "protect women and children who are most vulnerable to greed, neglect, violence, misogyny and abuse of power".

Ms Ross Frankson was in the news in 1995 when she and former U.S. legislator Bella Abzug joined "angry women activists" protesting unsuitable facilities for non-governmental delegates to the World Conference on Women in Peking.

Excerpt from the Independent on Sunday: 07 May 95:

Conference jitters inflame women's groups

By David Usborne in New York and Teresa Poole in Peking

CHINA is used to doing diplomatic battle with foreign states, but it may have met its match with a different kind of foreign power -- angry women activists around the world. They are exerting strong pressure on the UN Secretary-General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, to force China to change its arrangements for the World Conference on Women in Peking this September or face the prospect that the event might go to another country. There is fury among non-governmental organisations (NGOs) which plan to attend the gathering, over an 11th-hour decision by China to accommodate their forum in a dusty tourist centre at Huairou, 54km from the site of the official conference in central Peking. The move is seen by many as a ploy to keep activists away from the main action.

"We just cannot take it," said Joan Ross Frankson of the International Women's Tribune Center. "We have to stand very firmly and not take the dregs that the Chinese are offering." Bella Abzug, a veteran pioneer of women's rights in the US and former member of Congress, said the NGOs intended to fight China until a settlement was reached.

"Risks, Rights and Reforms: A 50-Country Survey Assessing Government Actions after the International Conference on Population and Development is available from: WEDO - Women's Environment and Development Organisation Web site: http://www.wedo.org