{"id":665763,"date":"2026-10-26T11:10:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-26T11:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/665763\/"},"modified":"2026-10-26T11:10:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-26T11:10:11","slug":"women-weary-of-being-exported-when-medical-profession-unable-to-meet-vital-healthcare-needs-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/665763\/","title":{"rendered":"Women weary of being \u2018exported\u2019 when medical profession unable to meet vital healthcare needs \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Women are \u201csick and tired of being exported\u201d every time the health service is unable to meet their \u201cessential healthcare needs\u201d, and the necessary specialist care should be in place in the State.<\/p>\n

Social Democrats TD Jennifer Whitmore <\/a>railed against the treatment of women by the medical profession, whom she claimed are \u201cgaslighting\u201d female patients. She called for a \u201ccultural shift\u201d in the approach to women\u2019s health problems and said this \u201chas to come from Government\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Wicklow TD also called for a system adopted in the UK to be implemented here where if a woman presents to her GP three times in any 12-month period with the same symptoms, the doctor would \u201creflect, review and rethink\u201d the case. <\/p>\n

\"\"Viral ‘hugging grandparents’ ad: did Jim O\u2019Callaghan need to intervene?<\/p>\n

She acknowledged the investment in women\u2019s healthcare and endometriosis by Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill<\/a>. In October last year, however, \u20ac16 million funding was announced for endometriosis care, but \u201cas of September, only one of those staff was in place\u201d. <\/p>\n

The Wicklow TD highlighted the experience of some of the 300,000 women here suffering from endometriosis, the debilitating and chronic illness where tissue similar to the lining of a woman\u2019s womb starts to grow outside the uterus.<\/p>\n

The figure represents one in seven women, but \u201cmany in the medical profession seem to have barely heard of it. How else can we explain why it takes a woman an average of 14 years to get a diagnosis?\u201d she asked. <\/p>\n

Raising the issue in the D\u00e1il, she referred to last week\u2019s \u201charrowing\u201d Virgin Media documentary \u2013 Health Hysteria: Are Women being Gaslit? \u2013 which featured women \u201cwho spent years in excruciating pain before eventually being diagnosed with conditions like endometriosis and premenstrual dysphoric disorder\u201d. <\/p>\n

Their healthcare concerns \u201cwere repeatedly dismissed or minimised by doctors\u201d, and women had to travel abroad for surgery because specialist care is not available in the State.<\/p>\n

She also highlighted the recent RT\u00c9 Prime Time programme featuring Dr Rachel O\u2019Connor, who had to take out a large loan to travel to Poland for surgery. \u201cShe was told if she had not had that surgery, she would have died.\u201d <\/p>\n

The Minister admitted it is a \u201cshame on me and everybody else that a doctor in our health system used her HSE salary and a loan to get emergency surgery in a different jurisdiction\u201d.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Health staff face sweeping promotion restrictions under spending controlsOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Surgery abroad is being funded on an emergency two-year basis, but \u201cwe are trying to develop longer-term surgical pathways\u201d, including a relationship with a specialist clinic in Bordeaux.<\/p>\n

Irish surgeons are being trained abroad, and there will be a \u201ccontinual series of fellowships for surgical training and endometriosis\u201d. In the interim, \u201cwe are trying to recruit specialists as best we can\u201d.<\/p>\n

She acknowledged the \u201cmedical gaslighting\u201d and said women have been treated differently in the system, with research on men sometimes applied inappropriately to women.<\/p>\n

Carroll MacNeill said the chief executive of the HSE and she wrote to \u201cevery single GP to try to raise awareness that this impacts one in seven women\u201d. <\/p>\n

A programme was introduced to fund emergency surgeries abroad, and in the last quarter of 2025, 143 surgeries were conducted in the State, as the health service builds a specialist surgery system here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Women are \u201csick and tired of being exported\u201d every time the health service is unable to meet their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":665764,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[103,397,396,61,60,7038],"class_list":["post-665763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-irish-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=665763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/665764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=665763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=665763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=665763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}