Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 15 June 2021
I congratulate my colleague Evelyn Tweed on her excellent first speech in Parliament.
Women’s health is important to men, too: we have mothers, daughters, sisters, wives, partners, and female friends and colleagues. Women cannot be second best in the treatment of illness.
In 2019, I participated in a meeting of the cross-party group on women’s health that was ably chaired by Monica Lennon and at which the British Heart Foundation’s “Bias and Biology” report was presented. It is shocking that the report showed that ischaemic heart disease, which is the leading cause of death for women in Scotland, is more likely to go untreated or undiagnosed or to be diagnosed later in women than in men, and that there is less awareness of the symptoms and signs of heart attacks as they happen to women. Women are also less likely than men to receive scans.
A BHF-funded study in 2018 showed that women who have an NSTEMI—non-ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction; a type of heart attack in which the coronary artery is usually partially blocked—are a shocking 34 per cent less likely than men to receive coronary angiography within 72 hours of their first symptoms. My last question in the chamber before the Parliament rose in March was about how much progress had been made in addressing that over the past two years. It was encouraging to hear from the previous public health minister that the women’s health plan will include cardiac disease as a key pillar and that implementation will align with the heart disease action plan, which highlights the importance of tackling inequities in access to diagnosis, treatment and care. I look forward to actions evolving from both plans, and I believe that ministers should strive to ensure equality of health outcomes at the earliest possible date.
Women may have a higher life expectancy than men, but quality of life matters, too. The SNP’s 2021 manifesto includes a commitment to improve the experience and diagnosis of women who visit their general practitioners with menstrual problems. Improved diagnosis and management of the menopause and legislation in aid of transvaginal mesh survivors will also help to better the quality of many women’s lives.
The Scottish ministers will explore ways in which the baby box can be used to further promote women’s health and support parental mental health. The time is also right to progress the women’s health plan. Since it first appeared in the 2019-20 programme for government, much of the focus and many resources relating to health have understandably shifted. However, I am glad that the plan is prioritised in the Government’s first 100 days.
The endo warriors and other women across Scotland will be pleased to see endometriosis specifically mentioned in the Government’s motion. The sad reality is that it is only over the past few years that endometriosis, which Evelyn Tweed eloquently described her own experience of, has been recognised as a hugely impactful condition for one in every 10 women.
The opening in April 2019 of the west of Scotland accredited endometriosis unit, which I campaigned for, means that women and girls who live in the west and require specialised treatment no longer have to go to Edinburgh or Aberdeen. Travel to those places was often prohibitive for financial reasons. Nevertheless, the fact that my February 2017 members’ business debate on endometriosis was only the second such debate in 18 years of this Parliament—the first was secured by Annabel Goldie in the first parliamentary session—and that it took another two years following the debate for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde to set up the specialist unit, tells me that women’s health has not always received the urgent focus that it merits.
As we have already heard, the SNP manifesto commits to reducing average waiting times for diagnosing endometriosis from eight years to less than one year by the end of this parliamentary session. That is ambitious, given that it is such a difficult condition to diagnose, but it is an ambition that is worth striving for. I will follow that closely.
I remind the new male MSPs that it is also their place to raise issues concerning women’s health. We must all do what we can to improve women’s health, as it is important for every one of us.