Jessica Nordell raises a number of necessary points dealing with girls and folks from ethnic minorities in accessing high quality healthcare (The bias that blinds: why some folks get dangerously completely different medical care, The lengthy learn, 21 September). One other necessary issue is that much less is thought about girls’s well being than males’s. A latest evaluation of the US Nationwide Institutes of Well being expenditure (by far the most important funder of well being analysis on the earth) concluded that the “NIH applies a disproportionate share of its assets to ailments that have an effect on primarily males, on the expense of those who primarily have an effect on girls”. The largest losers? ME/continual fatigue syndrome and migraine, funded respectively at 6% and seven% commensurate with the illness burden on sufferers.
Until metrics regarding discrepancies between the remedy of women and men in all features of healthcare are monitored, and people accountable held to account, girls will proceed to endure unnecessarily poor well being.
Silvia Hummel
Keswick, Cumbria
