Early diagnosis immensely important for women’s health: experts

Around 70 per cent of the healthcare workforce around the globe is comprised of women, but they experience extreme difficulties in accessing healthcare facilities and services, especially in low- and middle-income countries like Pakistan, leading female health experts said in a panel discussion on Wednesday.

The discussion titled ‘Leading Women in Science Breaking the Bias — Together’ was held under the Dialogue on Diagnostics. It was jointly organised by the Mir Khalil-ur-Rahman Memorial Society (MKRMS) in collaboration with Roche Pakistan at a hotel in Karachi, and was addressed by leading female health experts in the country.

The panellists comprised gastroenterologist Dr Huma Qureshi, Liaquat National Hospital’s pathology department head Dr Naveen Faridi, World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Sindh office head Dr Sara Salman, Aga Khan University Hospital’s Dr Shehla Zaidi and Dr Bushra Jamil, and Roche Pakistan Managing Director Hafsa Shamsie. Institute of Public Health Dean Dr Zarfishan Tahir moderated the discussion.

The panellists discussed issues related to public health, barriers to women’s health and the role of female empowerment in the health sector, and called for providing them greater access to health services in the country.

They said gender is an important determinant of health, particularly in low- and middle-income countries like Pakistan, adding that studies from different South Asian countries indicate women experience greater barriers in accessing healthcare services compared to men, resulting in overall poor health outcomes for them and high mortality.

They also said that despite rapid advances in healthcare in recent decades, the growing gender disparity in healthcare has resulted in a large percentage of women being unable to receive the care they need, adding that in 2020 alone, over 1.5 billion women were not tested for any of the most damaging diseases for women.

Dr Huma said women in Pakistan are very courageous in taking decisions regarding health of their children, but unfortunately, when it comes to their own health, they have to rely on their husbands or in-laws, adding that in our society, spending on women’s health is considered waste of resources.

“One of the barriers to women’s health is OPD [outpatient department] timings in Pakistan. OPDs run from 8am to 2pm at most public and private health facilities, and during this time, men are at work. When most of them get back home, OPD timings are over and women are deprived of getting health consultation.”

She said married women are more prone to getting infected with hepatitis B and C in Pakistan, as during pregnancy and childbirth, their risk of contracting the blood-borne diseases increases manifold due to unscreened blood. She called for better diagnostics and screening services available at health facilities dealing with women and child health.

Dr Naveen said breast cancer’s prevalence is alarmingly high in Pakistan, where even young women are being diagnosed with the disease, and called for creating awareness about the disease in women as well as lady health workers.

“Trained lady health workers can help women by going door to door for identifying if any of them has developed breast cancer. Timely diagnosis of breast cancer can result in complete cure.”

Hafsa said breast cancer used to be considered taboo some 20 years ago, and even taking its name on national media was not possible, but now everybody is talking about it, which has been made possible only due to awareness in society.

Initiatives like the Sehat card are a good start for people from low-income groups, but we still need to expand the scope because it has limited disease screening and treatment, she added. Dr Sara said the Sehat Sahulat card is helping a lot in improving accessibility to better health and diagnosis, adding that WHO is working on hospital set-ups for patients’ safety for better health facilities.

She said that early diagnosis is key to complete cure, especially in women, adding that diagnosis should first be done at community level with the help of female health workers.