A senate inquiry into menopause and perimenopause will deliver its report this week -- after hearing from hundreds of women about misdiagnosis, family breakdowns and a crippling mental health toll. Almost 300 submissions came from regional women, who are pushing for better menopause awareness and services after generations of silence and stigma. Toowoomba endocrinologist Dr Sheila Cook says limited access to medications and a lack of regional GPs make it difficult to get the right treatment.
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00:00In regional Australia, there's limited access generally to GPs and the training for GPs
00:09can miss out on immunopause care. So often women are finding that they're unable to get
00:14the care that they need and the medications that they would really benefit from can be
00:19limited with Australia as well. It's been a real problem. So I think in terms of GPs,
00:25you're really reliant on a limited number of GPs. You're really relying on those GPs having good
00:32knowledge and confidence in managing immunopause, which is not necessarily the case across all of
00:37our training. So that's the first part. And then access to specialist care to support those GPs
00:42is also limited. So that's the immediate difference, I say. And in the medications,
00:48in terms of oestrogen availability, that's been a difficulty across all of Australia for a number
00:53of years. So that's not limited to regional areas, but often our pharmacies have less access to some
00:59of these medications as the city pharmacies. So that can be another level of disadvantage for regional women.