UK: House of Commons committee report on Women's reproductive health conditions

Report following a "short inquiry looking at women’s reproductive health and the challenges that women face when they are being diagnosed and treated for these conditions. The inquiry considers any disparities that exist in the diagnosis and treatment, and the impact of women’s experiences on their health and lives."

Summary

Women’s reproductive health conditions, such as endometriosis, adenomyosis and heavy menstrual bleeding are highly prevalent in the UK. Yet many who experience them find their symptoms dismissed and normalised by those they turn to for help. For some conditions, accessing diagnosis and treatment can take years, leaving women and girls to “suck it up” and endure pain that interferes with every aspect of their daily lives, while their conditions worsen.

Women and girls are missing out on their education, career opportunities, relationships, social lives and are having their fertility impacted because of neglected reproductive health conditions. Many are resorting to expensive private healthcare.

Pervasive stigma associated with gynaecological and urogynaecological health, a lack of education and “medical misogyny” has contributed to poor awareness of these conditions. This is mirrored in a lack of medical research, treatment options, specialists, and the de-prioritisation of gynaecological care as evident by waiting lists, which have grown faster than any other specialty in recent years. Although there are patches of progress since the Women’s Health Strategy for England published in 2022, it has been too slow. The strategy lacks an implementation plan and resource, yet studies show that increases in funding for gynaecology services for early diagnosis and treatment provide a significant return on investment, reduces the burden on primary and secondary care settings and helps reduce sick leave and unemployment. The Government should provide the funding necessary to truly transform the support available to the millions of women affected by reproductive ill health in this country.

Full report, https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5901/cmselect/cmwomeq/337/report.html

 

BBC News: Medical misogyny leaves women in pain for years, say MPs, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c23v42jdle7o

 

Can't see much change until there is acknowledgement that this is an active problem, not a passive one. None of this is happening randomly, it's part of the medical profession and is the same everywhere. Somehow this is presented as a UK problem, which is a secondary problem on top of it: this weird compartmentalization where health issues are only happening within a nation's borders, and no one looks elsewhere to see the problem as a whole.

But they're treating it like it's some insensitivity issue that can be fixed by having a few training modules with some bad role-playing, or maybe a funny hat, because blaming medicine is never allowed. So those problems never get fixed, and with time you get yet another report reporting the same things that have been reported before, but those responsible don't want to change and are not expected to so they never do.

It's basically like most problems that have a root cause in wealth inequality. No one ever blames those responsible, let alone the system that enables it, because they are the people in charge. And like wealth inequality, this problem will only get worse as medicine goes deeper into the psychobehavioral woo ideology. Nothing they are willing to do will make any difference, because as a whole the industry is rapidly enshittifying and adding more problems than the tiny bits they are working on.