Written question WQ85748

It is very important that women receive the right healthcare at the right time. The Quality Statement on Women and Girls’ Health that I published on 5 July set out my clear expectations about how the NHS in Wales should support and care for women and girls. It describes what good provision looks like; not just for women’s reproductive health but across the whole spectrum of care to address the gender bias in our mainstream health system.

The Women’s Health Plan is being developed by the NHS Wales Collaborative and will form the NHS response to the Quality Statement. It will be a 10-year plan, owned by the NHS, which will set out short, medium and long term improvement objectives for the service.

The Plan will follow the same life-course approach set out in the Better for Women report published by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in 2019 in that it will advocate an approach where women have access to the right treatment throughout their life-course and where the NHS works in a more preventative space. As such it will not focus on specific conditions, although I anticipate that it will reflect care for women experiencing gynaecological conditions such as premenstrual dysphoric disorder more broadly.