In Nigeria, healthcare is often a privilege, not a right.
For marginalized women (female sex workers, transgender women, women living with HIV, women who inject drugs, women living with disabilities, and survivors of gender-based violence), accessing medical care is not just difficult but it is often impossible. Discrimination within hospitals and clinics has turned places meant for healing into spaces of exclusion, where moral judgment overshadows medical ethics.
Imagine a young woman living with HIV, rejected by a clinic because a nurse believes she brought the illness upon herself. A transgender woman, bleeding from an attack, is denied emergency care because hospital staff refuse to acknowledge her identity. A sex worker, suffering from severe malaria, is told, “We don’t treat people like you here.” These are not hypothetical situations; they are daily realities of marginalized women in Nigeria.
The Crisis of Discrimination in Healthcare
Nigeria’s healthcare system is failing the very people who need it most. The barriers are not just financial, they are deeply rooted in stigma, bias, and structural neglect. Hospitals both public and private routinely deny care based on a woman’s identity, profession, or health status. Some are turned away at the reception desk while others receive substandard care that puts their lives at risk.
For women living with HIV, seeking treatment often means facing public shaming from healthcare workers. For transgender women, medical visits turn into interrogations rather than consultations. For sex workers, accessing HIV prevention or reproductive health services is met with condescension, if not outright hostility. These experiences push marginalized women further into the shadows, forcing them to rely on unsafe, informal healthcare options or forgo treatment entirely.
The Impact on Public Health
Beyond individual suffering, this systemic discrimination has severe consequences for Nigeria’s fight against HIV, tuberculosis (TB), and malaria. If a sex worker with TB is denied care, the disease does not disappear rather it spreads. If a transgender woman is too afraid to seek HIV prevention services, the epidemic worsens. If survivors of violence cannot access medical support, cycles of harm continue.
Nigeria has committed to achieving universal health coverage and ending the HIV epidemic, yet these goals remain unattainable if an entire group of women are excluded from care. A healthcare system that fails the most vulnerable ultimately fails everyone.
What Must Change?
To break this cycle of exclusion, Nigeria must take urgent action:
- Enforce anti-discrimination policies in healthcare facilities to ensure all women receive care without bias.
- Train healthcare workers to provide stigma-free, gender-sensitive services.
- Establish safe, community-led clinics that specifically serve marginalized women.
- Hold hospitals accountable through patient feedback systems and rights-based advocacy.
Women’s health should never be conditional. No one should have to choose between enduring illness and facing humiliation at the hospital. As we mark International Women’s Day 2025, we must demand a healthcare system that serves all women without exception, without prejudice and delay.
Because when no hospital will treat you, where else can you go?
Written by: Grace Jennifer Samuel for International Women’s Day 2025. Click here to follow Jenny on Instagram.
