The battle for women’s health is long overdue

Unusually, some brilliant health news for women last week: the HPV vaccine, given to girls between 11 and 13, and since 2019 also to boys, has cut cervical cancer by 90 per cent. Almost all such cancers are caused by HPV, a sexually transmitted virus, so this is no surprise, but it’s jolly good to hear.

However, instead of sitting on their laurels, doctors and medical researchers should instead be taking this as a long-overdue first relay in a very long race. For far too long women’s reproductive health has been given short shrift. Breast cancer still takes far, far too many women’s lives. Screening is minimal, with women between 50 and 71 only offered mammograms every three years. There is no ovarian cancer screening programme at all.

Beyond these almost incomprehensible absences, the daily realities of women’s bodies are also overlooked. There is nothing offered to prevent miscarriage. Childbirth is still hell, a rollercoaster of agony, gore, danger and, in some cases, mismanagement. HIV, meanwhile, which in the West affects men more than women, can now be prevented through Prep, a blue pill with negligible, if any, side effects. Two pills are taken two hours before sex, and one for two days after. However, as I found out on a recent trip for routine STI screening, there is little research on how the pill affects women, and they are rarely offered it, despite being exposed to HIV through male partners who sleep with men.

As the world implodes over the chimera of identity politics, it’s easy to forget actual, physical, women’s bodies are still understudied, and still expected to put up with far too much suffering, some of which can be deadly. Let’s rejoice at the efficacy of the HPV vaccine, and get on to the next breakthrough, for there are many that are long overdue in the fight for women’s health.