I’ve seen how waiting for treatment can ruin women’s lives. Here’s how Labor can keep its promise to help them | Ranec Thakar

A A few weeks ago, a police officer came to my urogynecology clinic for a follow-up appointment. She told me that her life had completely changed since her surgery. When I first met her, she had been waiting years for treatment for incontinence, and she was miserable. She took more and more time off work as her condition worsened, and began to feel like there was no hope. Now, after a relatively simple operation, she is back to work and happy with life. I love my job, and I can’t measure the joy we give to patients when we manage to help them, but I am frustrated that they often have to wait so long.

If a new report the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (RCOG) shows that women like my patient are the tip of the iceberg. It found that more than three quarters of a million women are on waiting lists to receive treatment for serious gynecological conditions – and they are just the ones who have visited a GP and been referred for specialist care. Gynecology has one of the worst waiting lists in the whole of Britain. More than three-quarters (76%) of women awaiting care reported a deterioration in mental health and more than two-thirds (69%) said they were unable to participate in daily activities including work, socializing , having relationships and caring responsibilities. Many of them said they had experienced pain, exhaustion, shortness of breath, dizziness, anemia and infections due to their worsening conditions.

It is clear that the consequences for every woman waiting for treatment are profound and unacceptable. But this dire situation has implications for the entire NHS. A quarter of women surveyed for this report had gone to A&E because of their symptoms, and many of them required emergency interventions. As a consultant gynecologist, it is frustrating to know that many of my patients could have been treated quickly with physiotherapy or other outpatient care, had they been seen by a specialist earlier.

This is also a problem that costs the country millions. Just think of all those women who cannot work, care for others, or live for months or years because of treatable gynecological conditions. A recent report from the NHS Confederation suggested that for every additional £1 of public investment in obstetrics and gynecology services per woman in England there would be an estimated return of £11. That’s an additional £319 million in gross value added for the entire economy just from prioritizing women’s health.

I have been a consultant since 2002 and what I see now is a crisis in gynecological care caused by the underfunding and deprioritization of women’s health care by successive governments. When the RCOG published its report Stayed too long in 2022, the then shadow secretary for women and equalities, Anneliese Dodds, accused the Conservatives of ‘failing women’ with their ‘dismal mismanagement of our NHS’. It’s devastating to hear that waiting lists have grown by more than a third since then. The new Labor government has committed to prioritizing women’s healthcare, promising “Never again will women’s health be neglected”. So this is what it’s supposed to do.

Research into women’s health is woefully underfunded compared to research into conditions that affect everyone. This Government must commit to providing earmarked funding to enable innovation and pilot studies to improve primary healthcare for women across the UK. And it must do this in a way that eliminates current inequities in the system rather than exacerbating them. We know that women live in disadvantaged areas often wait the longest for treatment, and this needs to change. I call on the government to expand women’s health centers across Britain, so we can ensure that all women receive the same quality of integrated care wherever they live.

NHS staff must also be a priority – and that means not just doctors, but also physiotherapists and nurses, who can be based in the community so that women don’t have to come to hospitals for secondary care if they don’t need to. This allows the right patient to be seen by the right healthcare provider in the right place – a win-win situation for everyone. This also applies to better communication with patients. It is wrong that we can know when our bus is coming, but not when our major gynecological surgery will take place, or what we can do to alleviate our condition while we wait. In fact, I would like to change the way we run the whole service so that we can facilitate and empower patients. My experience is that a woman knows if she is incontinent. Is it really necessary for her to go to the doctor first before being referred to someone who can help?

The longer I do this work, the more I feel that my role is not only to care for patients, but also to fight for them. The women on these waiting lists need urgent help, but we also need to see a long-term commitment to sustainable financing and smarter thinking to tackle the complex systemic issues behind the delays. I am prepared to believe in Labour’s pledge to never allow women’s health to be neglected again. My patients and the country need them to keep that promise now.