Many women are left in pain due to inadequate treatments. Photo / Getty Images
The national healthcare system is struggling to meet the needs of 50 per cent of the population, often making them feel like their illness is a figment of their imagination.
NZ Herald health reporter Emma Russell tells the Herald's Front Page podcast that numerous women have stepped forward to share stories of how they struggled to receive adequate and timely treatment.
• Follow the Front Page podcast here.
"I did a story about a woman who for more than a decade was told by multiple doctors that her symptoms were in her head," says Russell.
"It turned out that they were in her head, but not as the doctors implied. She had a tumour in her brain that potentially could have killed her."
After this story was published, Russell received many emails from women who had similar experiences. The list of stories just went on and on.
Russell says many of the most harrowing stories are associated with illnesses that only women suffer.
"There are so many, but a really common one is endometriosis, which affects one in ten women. It's where the tissue lining of the uterus grows in other parts of the pelvic organs. The wait times to get diagnosed and treated are insane. One woman told me [she had waited] 20 years."
These oversights don't come cheap.
"We were only able to get a really small snapshot through ACC, but we found that $27 million had been paid out to women who had been failed by the system in the last five years.
"These are women who had failures with contraception, surgical mesh complications, birth injuries and gynaecological cancers."
Russell says that some of this comes down to unconscious bias in medical practice, but it can also be attributed in part to the way research is conducted.
"For so long, clinical trials have excluded women at child-bearing age, even if they weren't pregnant. There's a stat showing that eight out of 10 new drugs removed were withdrawn because of side effects that occurred mainly or exclusively to women."
After discovering this, Russell approached Medsafe in New Zealand and asked if there was any mandate for an equal number of men and women to be included in clinical trials.
"They came back and said 'no, they don't have a mandate, but they just expect best practice.'"
Another factor that must be taken into account is the fact that not all women suffer equally.
"Like a lot of areas in healthcare, if you've got the money to go privately, you can be seen quicker. That was definitely something we found. This creates a lot of inequities."
Russell says that even getting on a waiting list in the first place can be a problem.
Any reporting on gender imbalance will always attract criticism from those who point out that men have also experienced questionable results from the healthcare system.
"I totally agree," says Russell.
"I've seen it with my dad and so many of my male mates. But this isn't about comparing. It would be like comparing apples with oranges. It's different.
"This series was just focusing on conditions that are unique to women. These are your mothers, your sisters, your daughters, your aunties. It affects everyone."
Listen to the full podcast to hear Russell's insights on how things could be improved in the years to come.
• The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am.
• You can follow the podcast at nzherald.co.nz, iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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