Oral Answers to Questions

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd April 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Dame Andrea Leadsom)]

My hon. Friend was an incredibly hard-working health Minister and I pay tribute to her for all she did in this area. She will be aware that our groundbreaking drug and alcohol strategy commits more than half a billion pounds of new funding over the spending review period to rebuild drug and alcohol treatment services, with plans to get an additional 15,000 alcohol-dependent people into substance misuse treatment by 2024-25, which we are currently on track to achieve. I would be delighted to meet her to talk about it further.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

At my last surgery, a young woman told me that, thanks to the delay in her GP diagnosing her ovarian cancer, she is now infertile and receiving aggressive treatment. She had made four GP appointments over several months for her unexplained stomach cramps. Only in an emergency admission in another country was the ovarian cancer diagnosed and the tumour removed. How long will it be before the symptoms of female-specific conditions are taken seriously by our medical establishment, from initial training onwards?

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank the hon. Lady for raising this, and I very much send our best wishes to her constituent. The hon. Lady raises a really important point. The symptoms that women can experience are often very different for conditions relating not just to cancer, but to heart attacks, for example. Part of my prioritisation of women’s health is to get that message out to clinicians so that, as this case demonstrates so tragically, they are able to make the best and most prompt diagnosis for all women.