By Tommy Osborne

Women's Health

Women’s health neglected in healthcare, MLA Shirley Bond demands solutions

Mar 5, 2024 | 6:05 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – Prince George – Valemount MLA Shirley Bond demanded answers from the provincial government during yesterday’s session in legislature, saying women’s health in our healthcare system is not providing adequate treatment.

“We’ve heard the story of Sonya, who lost three litres of blood in the hallway of Langley Memorial Hospital while waiting for treatment following a miscarriage, or Alison, who was told to consider medically assisted death because she couldn’t get access to cancer treatment, And of Jane, who had a heart attack months after being told that her cardiac symptoms were probably just anxiety related,” Bond said.

These issues are just the tip of the iceberg, as Bond went on to explain that the wait time for the chronic pain and endometriosis program is currently 9-12 months, and you need a doctor’s referral to get in. Given the current doctor shortage across the province, this could mean you’re going more than a year without actually getting into the program.

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“That 12 months feels like an eternity when dealing with debilitating chronic pain,” Bond said.

The issues are large and numerous, but what can be done to address them? The President and CEO of the BC Women’s Health Foundation Cally Wesson said one huge aspect of improving women’s healthcare is raising awareness, as many people aren’t aware of just how big the problem actually is.

“Women weren’t included in clinical trials until the 1990s. Diverse women still probably aren’t included in clinical trials in the way they should be. Even things like Tylenol back in the day was never tested on women, it was only tested on men,” Wesson said.

This issue is perhaps most notably demonstrated by heart disease. Heart disease is the leading cause of death for women in our country, and it takes 7x more lives than breast cancer. There are 20% more heart disease related deaths in women than men, and for strokes that number rises to 32%. Despite this, research is still lagging behind in many issues of women’s health, meaning symptoms could be easily missed.

“A lot of times women heart attack symptoms are even missed because we’ve been taught only to look for the male symptoms. If you look at things like autoimmune diseases, they’re more common in women, yet there’s not enough research to understand why,” Wesson said.

As for what the symptoms are, for women it can include pain or discomfort in the jaw, shoulders, upper back, and/or the upper belly. It could also include vomiting, nausea, and shortness of breath, all symptoms that most people don’t associate with heart attacks because we haven’t been taught to look for that.

Beyond raising awareness, Wesson also spoke to the importance of getting women involved in clinical trials and research, and a large part of this comes down to funding research grants. It doesn’t even have to be grandiose million dollar studies, Wesson gave an example of a $30,000 grant for free contraceptives, which eventually turned into public policy because the initial grant was enough to get the research started and eventually picked up by other researchers and organizations.

To learn more about women’s health and to support the BC Women’s Health Foundation, you can visit its website here. Wesson also spoke about a specific campaign on the website for Women’s Health Research Month, which you can learn about here.

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