Scots patients need someone strong to fight for their rights
BY ELAINE SMITH
Labour MSP for Central Scotland
Being an MSP is such a rewarding job, but it is also such an all-encompassing job that I fear I can no longer give the 100% I’ve always given it because I’m struggling with asthma and health-related issues
As one of only 17 of the original MSPs to represent constituents in the Scottish Parliament since it was established in 1999, I’ve spent many of those years campaigning on health issues.
That is why I am in no doubt that the time is right for Scotland to appoint its first Patients’ Commissioner, someone who will speak up and give patients a strong voice, someone they can turn to when things go wrong.
Health has always been, and always will be, one of the most important issues we face as a society, from the dreadful problems caused by child poverty to the worries facing the elderly as they try to access the right care for them.
As an MSP I’ve spent my time campaigning on health inequality, which is why I welcomed last week’s report by Baroness Cumberlege. Sadly it also, once again, highlighted a gender health gap where women’s concerns are not taken seriously. Indeed, women often experience dismissive attitudes to ongoing debilitating symptoms and excruciating pain.
Statistics show funding for medical research has traditionally gone to conditions which affect both men and women, or only men.
With my own thyroid problems I have personally experienced how a medical condition which predominantly affects women is marginalised or ignored. I spent decades struggling to have my condition diagnosed and properly treated. Yet it is estimated that 100,000 women in Scotland have an underactive thyroid.
Despite one of the longest running Public Petitions and numerous parliamentary debates, including in the House of Lords, women with thyroid disease are still not being properly treated or listened to.
Many patients do not respond to the generic drug Levothyroxine. Yet they are still compelled to buy lifesaving drugs such as Liothyronine (T3) via the internet, as some health boards are refusing to prescribe
T3 – mainly due to cost. For many women T3 has proven to be the only effective treatment for their condition and it is routinely prescribed across the rest of the world. But here, in a male dominated medical establishment, it seems it is easier to prescribe antidepressants, or blame the menopause, than to actually listen and properly diagnose and treat such conditions.
I would hope a Patients’ Commissioner will result in fewer women having to suffer unnecessarily and fight to get the most appropriate treatment.
The inequality and disempowerment in health provision that women suffer because of their sex can no longer be ignored. It must be challenged, here in Scotland, across the UK and globally, and we must see major change.