Endometriosis: 'Women's health at bottom of Welsh NHS wait lists'

A woman who has been waiting three years for a hysterectomy says she feels she and other women have been pushed to the bottom of the list.

Jessica Ricketts, from Barry, is one of 164,000 patients who have been on various NHS waiting lists for more than a year, compared to less than 7,000 two-years-ago. But it will take another three years to tackle the backlog.

Welsh government's plan to tackle long waits is due to be published later.

But for Jessica, she remains in pain with endometriosis despite six gynaecological surgeries over the past 10 years and is now waiting for the hysterectomy.

"Every day there's some sort of pain and I'm in pain right now," she told BBC Radio Wales Breakfast.

"My fear is that the endometriosis - because obviously I'm just waiting - is now in my diaphragm, and so I get pain on my left side.

"With every day almost, which used to just be cyclical and now it's gone a lot worse."

Jessica is keen to see what the Welsh government's plan to cut waiting times is, but she believes women's health "seems to be at the very bottom of the pile".

She added: "I think it's even more important now than ever, to really push the women's health side of things. We have it takes on average 10 years for a diagnosis of endometriosis.

"As women we have to fight to even get past the GP who is severely under-trained in this department.

"And it's just seems to be that because we're women. We're told that you know, just suck it up really and carry on and it needs to be a fairer system, particularly for the women of Wales and we need to stop pushing it to the bottom of the pile."

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Source: BBC News, 26 April 2022