Monday, September 30, 2019

Gender health Inequality

Women who suffer heart attacks are dying needlessly because they fail to recognise their symptoms and receive poorer care than men. says a British Heart Foundation report.
Over 10 years, between 2002 and 2013, more than 8,000 women in England and Wales died unnecessarily after a heart attack, it found.
In the 1960s, seven out of 10 hearts attacks in the UK proved fatal. Today, seven out of 10 people who have a heart attack will survive.
But women are missing out, says Dr Sonya Babu-Narayan, associate medical director of the British Heart Foundation (BHF).
"Heart attacks have never been more treatable.
"Yet women are dying needlessly because heart attacks are often seen as a man's disease, and women don't receive the same standard of treatment as men."
She said studies had "revealed inequalities at every stage of a woman's medical journey, and although complex to dissect, they suggest unconscious biases are limiting the survival chances of women".


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The BHF report says that each year around 35,000 women are admitted to hospital following a heart attack in the UK each year - an average of 98 women a day, or four per hour.
In the UK, women are twice as likely to die from coronary heart disease as from breast cancer.
The report found that:
  • women often delayed seeking help
  • they were more likely to receive an incorrect diagnosis and substandard treatment compared to men
  • risk factors, such as smoking and high blood pressure, increase heart attack chances more in women
  • the quality of aftercare was also substandard

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