Vicky Phelan case: The Irish state has a problem dealing with women pic.twitter.com/qAOuq5neXJ
— RTÉ ClaireByrneLive (@ClaireByrneLive) April 30, 2018
Last night.
On RTE’s One Claire Byrne Live.
Journalist Alison O’Connor noted the common thread running through the biggest health scandals in Ireland – namely that they involve the healthcare of women.
Previously: HSE Boss ‘Dismissed My Concerns’ About Cervical Screening Results
Sponsored Link
Women’s Lives Matter!
Quick let’s get a hashtag going because that’s the “down with the kids” thing to do and will definitely make a difference!
#WomensLivesMatter
we should also get signs printed up with pointless empty virtue signalling phrases like
down with the patriarchy in healthcare etc.
The UK had* a spend difference of 8 to 1 only ten years or so ago, on women’s versus men’s health…. in Australia, it’s 4 to 1. I’m sure Ireland is not much different, and lies somewhere in between… no, maybe?
If that is the case, then it would be pretty logical that the majority of issues would be with regard to where the procedures/health investment are being made.
Not sure what she’s trying to say with that statement….
(haven’t watched vid, only read BS’s copy.. vid wouldn’t play for me)
( * Anyone with an update on spends &/or procedure ratios for Ireland? )
here’s Cian…
I don’t have data. But it makes sense that there is more interaction between women and healthcare providers. Women are just different than men and have physical differences that involve healthcare:
1. the pill
2. maternity (and all related parts – perhaps this should be gynaecology)
3. women live longer, and older people have more interactions with healthcare than men
There are also other areas where it was decided to invest more into women’s health:
1. The various cancer screening tests are predominately aimed at women (Cervical + breast)
2. women get 2 more vaccines (there is a teenage MMR?) and the HPV vaccine.
Precisely.
I like O’Connor, but she’s talking nonsense on this one, trying to make it into a gendered issue without weighing up the facts behind the issues, is disingenuous… and daft, in fairness.
( thats me done now… I’ll go back to me sun lounger :) … ‘hup! )
Don’t work Clampers – if you ever end up in hospital (as a man) you’ll get a bed straight away. It only the women left on trolleys.
The significant difference in spend is due to pregnancy and maternity care, which is exclusively female for the moment, as is cervical cancer screening. There has been health scandal after health scandal affecting women. There has been no such scandals in men’s healthcare and I can’t believe you’re turing this into a “boys against girls” issue.
So pregnancy-related healthcare spending is ” exclusively female for the moment”. Are you expecting human biology to change all of a sudden?
Shame on the militant feminists trying to turn this into a men versus women issue. The situation is much more complicated than it appears on the surface.
How is it much more complicated?
It’s more complicated because there are many common potentially aggressive cancers that only affect women and require more screaming e.g. cervical and breast cancers. Maternity spending takes up a significant portion of the healthcare budget, issues related to prenatal and postnatal care only affect women because only they can have children. There are also issues related to contraception that are more complicated like prescription of the pill that require medical supervision.
I listened to Leo’s Dail contribution about the cervical cancer controversy. There was an utter communications failure, that is without doubt. There are however still questions about the statistical false-negative rates across different laboratories. They will only be answered by means of a proper hopefully quickish enquiry and not by a witchhunt.
I am aware that this is a complicated sensitive and deeply personal matter to many people but blindly emotionally lashing out is not helpful in this regard.
This is about to change as we were told tonight by TDs that that company that carried out smear tests also do bowl caner tests
So if they messed up the smear tests then possibly tests done on both men and women for bowl cancer is the next scandal
Clampers tries to turn everything into a “boys against girls” issue.
@Daisy “There has been no such scandals in men’s healthcare”
What is “men’s healthcare”? just testicular cancer and male pattern baldness?
Or is mental health “men’s healthcare”? Is Suicide “men’s healthcare” The 4:1 ratio of men to women might suggest it is.
Is that a scandal?
Shush!
If there’s a screening campaign to identify Male suicidal ideation and people are given the wrong information that leads to their death, then yes.
Mental health underfunding and understaffing is a HUGE FECKING SCANDAL, and since early intervention is extremely effective in the long-term, the fact that kids are identified with problems at an early age but then cannot get the help they need leading to suffering and suicide in adolescence and adulthood, then it is of that order, if not more so. It is truly horrible, and the ultimate effects do seem to fall disproportionately on men in terms of suicide, though it would not be exclusively gendered across the whole area of mental health issues.
+1
Ahem, em…. the point is that OConnor is making it a gender issue. There will be more mistakes in the areas with the vast majority of investment and procedures. This should not make it a gender issue as OConnor is doing…. not me, OConnor, thanks.
It IS a gendered issue.
In the current scandal – while there has no evidence (none nada zilch zero) presented that failure to disclose the missed tests had an adverse effect on any woman’s health it; the silence in what was probably the sincere belief that the women concerned did not need to know seems totally gendered.
There is no way to know if men would have been told (and these women were not 80 years old and demented they will in the main have been in very early middle age ) but there is no analagous case of men NOT being told.
Yeah, clearly she’s wrong. I mean, trying to draw a common thread between Magdalene laundries, symphostiotomies, hep c, the 8th amendment, Kerry babies, this cervical cancer issue, I mean, there’s no commonality. Just because they’re all related to women’s reproductive issues…
Could have happened to any group of people. It’s just a massive coincidence that it happened to people with female reproductive systems. But no inference should be drawn from that detail.
I take back my snotty comment about Rosa earlier. What a sh*tshow life has been here for women.
So what exactly are the men’s healthcare areas that are so wonderfully scandal-free?
Decent piece on men’s mental health (UK article with reasonable application to Ireland)
It is often said, ‘men don’t talk’ about issues. But, there is now much research showing that they do, just that they do it differently to women. Problem is psychologists are not trained to deal with how men “talk”. Also touches on other issues with regard to mental health treatment for men.
https://www.bps.org.uk/blogs/dr-john-barry/men-are-able-talk-are-psychologists-able-listen
I haven’t heard any scandals breaking about prostate cancer, testicular cancer or vasectomies. Touch wood. (As it were.)
It is a gender issue since the scandals and controversies are so overwhelmingly centered on female health issues. It is, or they are, NOT male vs female, since very few men will take the ‘side’ of the HSE in the scandals, and many men support repealing the 8th.
Well put Nigel. I think you’ve nailed it.
Well said Nigel. Women are less-regarded in society generally – in politics, the church and in healthcare. The long, slow haul from votes to equal status is not over yet and the current debates, cancer screening and the referendum, prove this.
Women’s Lives Matter!
“women are less regarded” …yet receive the overwhelming vast majority of healthcare spend…. hmmmmm….
I think you may be deluded somewhat with that statement.
Would you prefer a 50:50 split on spending?
I wouldn’t, but spend should go where it is needed, and prostate kills more men than breast cancer kills women yet look where the screening investment is going… yet you claim women are less regarded…
What would it take for you to ‘think’ otherwise, that women get all the investment?
Cop on to yourself please.
I’d agree with that Nigel.
she really doesn’t like us ,does she ?
No, it’s fine. She didn’t know your feelings would be hurt by her saying meanie things about the priorities of reproductive healthcare in this state and the consequences for women so it’s all fine.
It’s great! Hurray!
It was a snippet from an interview. So I can’t figure out if she’s just talking about the physical differences between men and women being the issue or is it about the states treatment of women? The HEPC scandal for instance. It was a woman that Noonan dragged through the courts. Vicky Phelan was dragged through them as well. Again under a FG minister mind you. And numerous others over time forced to take on the state? Misogynistic State? Is that her point?
Smyphisiotomy -women
Neary – women
Hep C – overwhelmingly women
Magdalen Laundries – women and their children
Access to abortion – women
There is a gender issue.
Ulster man. So I guess that means your a virtue signalling feman.
Firstly the blood scandal did not discriminate by gender. We all have blood. State sexual abuse was meted out to both boys and girls. Bowel test are now also under scrutiny. I believe both men and women have bowels.
Here’s a question
How many others dragged the Dept of Health / HSC
And indeed any other Government Dept or agency ie.
AGS Prison service Army Navy,
Or Semi State,
Kicking and screaming and denying and defending
And delaying and delaying and delaying
And had it all hidden behind signed condifentialities and non-disclosures?
Anyone seriously think Vicky Phelan was the first litigent presented with a confidentiality clause?
Get real lads
We don’t know the half of it
succinct
Correct Frilly. We have a few strong people that will stand up and be counted. The others maybe hadn’t the strength to carry on against the state and were worn down by being dragged through the courts.
There’s something very sad about the number of men who have responded to the poor regard for women’s health (the screening scandal and the resistance to removing that clause in the Constitution) with a whinge about dividing the national health budget 50/50 along gender lines.
O look! Sick babies are getting more than me!
Women’s Lives Matter! doesn’t mean that men’s and children’s lives don’t.
Blah blah blah. So how about “All lives matter”?
Oh for god sake! It’s the patriarchy conspiring against women of course!! They think bowel screenings are involved now. Both sexes have bowels right?