For example, although polio strikes females and males equally, research in one country recorded more than twice the number of boys with effects of polio than girls. The one explanation is that boys survived polio twice as often. This study supports the common observation in many developing countries that family response to sickness or disability among male children is much more serious, resulting in more visits to medical and health services. Additionally, when combined with traditional practices of males being fed before females, and female children receiving what is left over, the result is that often the disabled female child becomes malnourished as well. In this manner, diseases and disabilities which can be survived by boys, become life-threatening to girls.
Action is needed to help disabled girls survive and obtain a better quality of life.
In other words, those who have the least influence on the conduct of armed conflict are now its most frequent victims. Children and women are sustaining lifelong disabling injuries, including orthopedic trauma, emotional trauma, spinal cord and brain injuries, and loss of vision, hearing and mental capacity due to landmines, bombing and other explosives. They are in immediate need of rehabilitation services, including technical aids and appropriate technology , yet are last in line to receive them. Their needs wait until injured soldiers and other men are aided. There, women gave testimony as to how their disabilities had ended their marriages, isolated them from their families and communities, and destroyed their futures.