Women live longer than men, but they are not healthier

Need

doctor. “This report clearly shows that there has been uneven global progress in health over the past three decades and in women,” emphasizes Luisa Sorio Flor, lead author at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington in the US.

Although women live longer, they suffer more years of poor health. Unfortunately, little progress has been made in reducing the burden of conditions that lead to illness and disability. This underscores the urgent need to pay more attention to the non-fatal consequences that limit women’s physical and mental functions, especially with age.

More financing

According to Gabriela Gil of IHME (Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation), it is important that There will be more funding for women’s health care. According to Gill, this mainly concerns problems such as depression, which are often underfunded, despite their significant impact.

She also emphasizes that when planning future health systems, all health issues that women face in their lives must be taken into account. For example, women often face more restrictions due to these complaints, while the number of women in older age groups is often increasing.

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Holland

The demand for gender-specific care in the Netherlands is also increasing. Journalist Miriam Kayger explained in a previous interview with Linda. She actually explains how she personally had to deal with this. She was sent from pillar to post with various complaints, until it was later revealed that she had a benign thyroid tumor.

While searching for the book I’m not a man! She discovered that at least eighty percent of people with unexplained complaints are women. I asked every doctor I could find the same question: “Why are there so many women who suffer from unexplained complaints?”

difference

The doctors’ answer came as a shock to Kayger. She discovered that female organs nurse differently and have a completely different hormonal system. For example, autoimmune diseases, depression, and anxiety disorders in women are often hormone-related.

Because women are less involved in medical research, there is still a lot that doctors don’t know. “Symptoms in women may be different, but due to a lack of knowledge, doctors often do not realize this,” explains Kayger. “In addition, women experience side effects from medications twice as often, because they have been tested mainly on men.” As a result, women often have to “walk around” for a long time to be taken seriously.

Financial impact

Also the company of women draws attention to this. They asked Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam to conduct research on the financial impact of health problems in women. He showed that the lack of recognition and proper treatment of four common health problems in women costs society a huge amount of money.

Cecile Wansink, a spokeswoman for WOMEN Inc., previously explained this in an interview with LINDA. This applies to menopause, endometriosis, common psychological disorders and cardiovascular diseases.

The costs of these four common health problems amount to 7.6 billion euros annually. “Really huge. This huge amount is due to the fact that many women are currently unable to work or cannot work partially. This is because they have severe untreated complaints or fail completely, such as cardiovascular disease.

Health equity

If it were up to Kyger, this would change quickly. According to her, it is important that the Netherlands, as in Canada and America, starts with gender-specific care. That’s why I started a petition two years ago, which has been signed more than 60,000 times. She expressed her hope that the issue would soon be put on the agenda of the House of Representatives.

She is also organizing Women’s Health Day on May 25, 2024. In this way, she wants to ensure that more women are heard and that their complaints are not dismissed as “normal during menopause” or as possible symptoms of burnout.

Vedavati Patwardhan, a professor at the University of California and one of the study’s authors, also wants to pay more attention to this topic. “Thanks to these types of studies we are able to better understand health differences between the sexes. This is critical for shaping future research and policies that seek to achieve health equity. This allows us to develop more effective strategies.”

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