Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:16 pm on 18 May 2022.
Women's health is something that we all need to understand. There is a duty on us to ensure improved awareness, and that there's better care provision available for the various conditions suffered by women of all ages, very often in silence and without sufficient support, as we heard earlier from Sioned Williams.
In the last few months, a number of constituents have contacted me regarding one specific condition, namely endometriosis. It's a condition that causes chronic pain for one in 10 women in Wales—about 300,000 in total. Although I'm aware that the Government has already announced that every health board will employ specialist nurses to care for women suffering from endometriosis—and I welcome that very much—the health gap in gender terms, however, continues. As we've already heard, in Wales it takes nine years to have a diagnosis of the condition, the longest in the whole of the United Kingdom.