The federal health minister, Mark Butler, says he is “astounded” that medical students can spend as little as one hour learning about menopause and has signalled that the government is likely to take action after a damning parliamentary inquiry.
On Sunday Butler told the ABC’s Insiders that several inquiries had told a “shameful story” about women’s treatment in Australia’s health system, saying there was more to do after Labor’s “modest investments” in women’s health.
It found that women were dismissed or offered ineffective treatments by healthcare professionals when they sought menopause care, including one who was told by her GP that all he had learned in medical school was that menopausal women were either “mad or sad”.
On Wednesday a Senate inquiry recommended that medical professionals should be better educated on menopause during their degrees, and women experiencing menopause should be given more flexibility in the workplace.
Butler said earlier reports “tell a pretty shameful story about women not being taken seriously in the health system about their symptoms”, citing as evidence that it can take seven to nine years to be diagnosed with endometriosis.
[Ed: Cynically wondering if this new found concern just reflects the pharmaceutical industry’s interest in promoting hormone replacement therapy.]