Endometriosis and Polycystic Ovary Syndrome

Alex Davies-Jones Excerpts

Monday 1st November 2021 Westminster Hall

[Alex Davies-Jones (Pontypridd) (Lab)]

I associate myself with your comments about Sir David, Mr Mundell, and those of other hon. Members present. Sir David and I shared a passion for animal welfare and for women’s health, so I put on the record my thanks for all his incredible work to raise awareness of endometriosis. Among many other things, that is Sir David’s legacy and a testament to him as a fantastic campaigner.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi) rightly said, endo and PCOS are two gynaecological conditions that affect roughly one in 10 women—10% of all women or all those assigned female at birth in the UK today. Some 1.5 million people live with endometriosis and deal with symptoms ranging from chronic pain and fatigue to infertility.

Yet our research and awareness of these conditions still lags behind. We have already heard at length that the average diagnosis time for endometriosis in the UK is almost eight years. For women dealing with those symptoms and living with that pain, that is simply not good enough. In the worse cases, I am aware of women who have been told that the symptoms that they are experiencing and the debilitating pain that they are living with—like my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy)—are a normal part of life or that they are somehow imagined or exaggerated.

Women with endometriosis have double the risk of infertility of other women, yet many report receiving little information from their doctor about the impact of their diagnosis on their future ability to have children. They are just told, “Try and have a baby; it might help.”

It is clear that the debate comes at a fortunate time, given that today marks the start of National Fertility Awareness Week. Sadly, many women with endometriosis and PCOS have been left under the impression that they will struggle with their fertility, even though research from Endometriosis UK suggests that 60% to 70% of people with the condition can get pregnant spontaneously. As someone who has experienced infertility, I know at first hand how difficult, challenging and upsetting such news can be.

Many women have struggled to get access to the care they need to understand and manage their fertility, and have been baffled to find out that, due to a lack of research, the link between endometriosis and fertility is not properly understood. National Fertility Awareness Week is an important opportunity to raise the issue and I would be grateful if the Minister could outline what steps her Department will take to ensure that people with PCOS and endometriosis understand the impact of their condition on their fertility.

The petition rightly calls for greater research into cures and treatments for endometriosis and PCOS, and I look forward to hearing from the Minister what actions her Department will take to support that work. I know of women who do not want children who have felt that their pain and symptoms were not being treated seriously by medical professions simply because they were not directly related to fertility.

Not only can the symptoms have a major impact on people’s quality of life, but there is also evidence that they have a major impact on women’s ability to get on in the workplace. As we have heard, women experience a lack of understanding from employers, from an outright dismissal of their illness as “women’s problems” to losing their jobs for taking too much sick leave. Greater research and understanding of endometriosis are vital, as is education on the condition and its impact.

For too long, women’s health has not been taken seriously. Although I am glad that progress has been made in Wales and across the UK, as outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West, we still have a long way to go to ensure that conditions such as endometriosis and PCOS are taken seriously and understood not just by medical professions but by everyone from employers to teachers. For the 1.5 million women living with these conditions, we cannot afford to wait.