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Wing women's health problems in a run-down National Health Service. "Period pains? I won't prescribe anything, She'll grow out of it" "Have you been a naughty girl? Has your boyfriend slept with anyone else?" "It's the menopause. All women have to go through it"
Those attitudes must ring a bell with many women. They are just examples of the patronising, moralising, let-themsuffer attitude of so many male doctors to women.
Some elements in the NHS hierarchy are aware of the backwardness of many doctors, and are beginning to offer partial solutions to the problem.
One of these is the idea of Well Woman clinics. In the London borough of Islington there are five such clinics, with the capacity to see about ten women every week or fortnight.
The idea grew out of the experience of one of the Nursing Officers in running a cancer-screening clinic in the area. Why treat just one part of a woman's body? was the question she asked. So Well Woman clinics were born in Islington.
The idea of these clinics-entirely preventative medicine, places you can make an appointment with and not tell your own doctor, where you get a complete physical check-up-proved very popular. Locally, there are waiting lists of two weeks for most of the Well Woman clinics. Nationally, the CHC has been inundated with letters from women wanting to know where their nearest clinic is.
Some women would be prepared to travel up to forty miles just for their peace of mind. A woman from Nottingham discovered that her nearest clinic was-guess where-Islington, London. ( PREVENTION IS BETTER THAN CURE The need for preventative health care for women is of pressing urgency. England and Wales come top of the league tables together with Denmark for a high incidence of breast cancer-and a large number of these are late discoveries. One in 18 women gets breast cancer, and only a fifth of these are cured. Yet if caught early, it can be successfully treated.
Cervical smears too can be a lighly effective form of preventative medicinewith regular check-ups, any abnormality can be treated quickly and easily. But many GP's won't do this routine screening for women under 35.
mission recognised the value of clinics like these in their evidence to that august body, the Royal Commission on the National Health Service They said: "There is need in the health care of women for a clinic service which will operate side by side with general practice, This clinic service would offer and advertise treatment for contraception, VD, abortion, menopausal problems, psycho-sexual counselling and screening for cervical and breast cancer.
ance of Well Woman clinics as part of ority claimed there were financial restrictions on them as far as establishing later plans for a Well Woman clinic were included "in the planning cycle for this year" for a new Health Centre in the area. But will we get more of these clinics? It's actually quite on the cards but only as part of the Health Service rationalisation- commonly known as the cuts.
CUT PRICE HEALTH CARE Over the nextten years Health Service planners aim to reduce the number of hospitals and increase the number of clinics housing doctors practices. Once you've got the clinics, you've got the basis for a Well Woman's clinic, which doesn't cost much in terms of Health Service budgets.
a service well below need. That is, and always has been, the maxim of a fundstarved British Health Service. So an obvious demand from women is for more of the clinics, with enough sessions and at convenient times, where a mother can bring her children and a working woman can come after work.
Even the Equal Opportunities Comcheck-ups?
More and more there is an acceptthe Health Service. In January this year, Enfield and Haringey Area Health Authour ills.
Well Woman clinics went. Three months place.
Movement.
Of course, they will continue to offer self. MORE KNOWLEDGE NEEDED But is the service offered what we want? Is this sort of medicine going to perpetuate ideas about "women's problems" as things which must be kept hidden at all costs, something to be ashamed of. Or will it help us gain greater control over and pride in our own bodies through understanding them and knowing when to seek medical help and Experience of these clinics so far does not look promising. One clinic sends results of tests straight to the woman's doctor. If the woman herself wants to know she must leave a stamped addressed envelope specially.
What it all adds up to is a reinforcement of old attitudes to women, not a breaking from them. It's a liberal concern with women's problems, not an understanding of women's needs-because the most crying need for women's health is knowledge: and de-mystification of our bodies and the cure for Surely this need should be financed by the Health Service we all contribute to, yet have no say in how it is run? Well Woman's clinics as they are now are undoubtedly a step in the right direction, but they leave all the things which lead to that appallingly high figure of women with breast cancer untouched. They leave women just a number on her National Health Service card, filed away in some convenient Obviously if we, as feminists, run a clinic, we do things to break down that ideology and combat its roots in any way we can. We also organise it collectively and democratically so that we can ensure that any faults are corrected-as happens now with self-help groups begun by women from the Women's But once we start demanding Health Service money-as we have every right to-bureaucracy and red-tape get in our way. We have no formula for how we could exercise real community control over a clinic for women funded by the Health Service, so we remain faced with two inadequate choices: Health Service funding and no control, or do-it-yourFor the first time since the rise of the
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