The gynaecology waiting list has fallen during her time in the role \u2013 by 30,000 between June 2024 and April 2026. \u201cI was really shocked that there were 600,000 women, just in England, on it, and 85 per cent of them were not going to need any form of invasive procedure, inpatient admission or admission for day surgery \u2013 they shouldn\u2019t be on a waiting list, during which time their problem could be getting worse.\u201d She adds: \u201cI\u2019ve been a gynaecologist for over four decades, and I have become increasingly impatient about the fact that so many girls and women are looked after poorly.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Women\u2019s health is not just maternity care\u2019<\/p>\n
Regan\u2019s time as women\u2019s health ambassador hasn\u2019t been without its challenges. \u201cMany politicians and policymakers have assumed that women\u2019s health is maternity care<\/a>,\u201d she says. \u201cMost women aren\u2019t pregnant for more than a couple of years of their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n In her own case, she points out that she was pregnant for just seven months before her 33-year-old twin daughters, Jenny and Clare, arrived prematurely in December 1992 and spent their first month in the special-care baby unit at St Mary\u2019s Hospital, Paddington. It was at the same hospital that she had founded the Recurrent Miscarriage Service, which would go on to become the largest of its kind in the world, earlier that same year.<\/p>\n