Britain’s girls obtain poorer healthcare than these in Vietnam, Latvia and even Kazakhstan, a world examine has discovered.
The UK has dropped from thirtieth to thirty seventh place in a world league desk which ranks how nations carry out in 5 key areas of girls’s well being and wellbeing.
Consultants blamed the slide on the UK’s failure to make much-needed progress in girls’s healthcare during the last three years, whereas different nations had ‘leapfrogged’ forward.
The nation scored decrease than the EU common on areas like most cancers screening, emotional well being and girls’s security within the 2023 Hologic World Girls’s Well being Index, revealed right this moment.
There have been additionally declines in how girls within the UK rated their being pregnant care, entry to healthcare and happiness ranges.
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The annual survey of almost 79,000 girls from 143 nations and territories discovered girls’s well being within the UK had not improved on common since 2020, whereas different nations had superior.Â
Poland, for instance, scored the identical because the UK final yr however constructive adjustments meant it jumped forward to ninth place globally this yr.
Tim Simpson, of Hologic UK & Eire, a medical know-how firm specialising in girls’s well being, described the findings as ‘a name for motion and enchancment’.
He stated: ‘Regardless of vital potential for progress, the UK is being leapfrogged by different nations, that are making extra substantial positive factors in girls’s well being.
‘This underscores an pressing want for enhanced give attention to subjects like preventative measures and being pregnant care, to not solely catch up however to set an ordinary for girls’s well being globally.’
The ballot discovered girls within the UK have been much less doubtless than these dwelling in EU nations to have acquired preventive care prior to now yr, with fewer receiving screening for hypertension, most cancers, diabetes and sexually-transmitted infections than the EU common.
Two in 5 girls within the UK reported feeling each day fear and stress, with girls extra more likely to say they felt unhappiness, stress and anger than these dwelling in EU nations.
Ranges of detrimental feelings, together with fear, unhappiness, stress and anger amongst girls dwelling within the UK have all risen considerably since 2020, whereas ranges have barely decreased throughout the EU on common.
In actual fact, unhappiness ranges reported by girls within the UK have elevated yearly because the survey was first revealed in 2020.
Now one in three (32 per cent) stated they felt unhappy the day before today, up from one in 5 (21 per cent) three years in the past.
Girls within the UK have been additionally extra doubtless than their EU counterparts to really feel dissatisfied about with the ability to entry high-quality healthcare — akin to getting a GP or hospital appointment — the place they lived.
Two thirds of girls surveyed within the UK (67 per cent), in contrast with 68 per cent within the EU, stated they have been glad they might entry high-quality healthcare, down from 75 per cent three years in the past.
Within the UK, girls are additionally now much less more likely to say care throughout being pregnant is passable, with 74 per cent agreeing with this assertion in comparison with 77 per cent final yr.
Within the UK, girls are additionally now much less more likely to say care throughout being pregnant is passable. The graphic reveals the NHS trusts in England which have logged the largest drop in midwives between September 2022 and July 2023 — the newest information accessible. Northern Care Alliance NHS Basis Belief has seen its midwife workforce drop 12.8 per cent over this era
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A couple of in 4 girls (27 per cent) within the UK stated they lived with each day ache and the same quantity (26 per cent) stated they have been dwelling with well being issues which restricted their regular day-to-day actions.
The variety of girls who stated continual situations interfered with their each day lives has elevated by greater than 50 per cent in three years.
Commenting on the analysis, Dr Ranee Thakar, president of the Royal School of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, stated: ‘This work underscores the crucial want for governments, non-governmental organisations and policy-makers to prioritise girls’s well being and put money into interventions that put girls’s greatest pursuits first.’
The highest-ranked locations have been Taiwan (72), Kuwait (68), Austria (67), Germany (67) and Switzerland (66).
The UK was thirty seventh with a rating of 60 out of 100, placing it beneath the EU common of 61.
The worst nations on the earth in 2023 for girls’s well being have been Afghanistan, with a rating of 26, adopted by Sierra Leone (34), the Republic of the Congo (35) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (36). Globally, the typical rating was 54.
Janet Lindsay, chief govt of the charity Wellbeing of Girls, stated the report ought to function a ‘stark reminder’ that ladies and women wanted higher care and help.
A Division of Well being and Social Care spokesperson stated: ‘The Authorities has made girls’s well being a prime precedence, and is driving ahead a Girls’s Well being Technique that’s delivering a greater customary of care for girls and women.’
