For far too long, the health system has failed wāhine. READ MORE:* Experts, doctors and MPs back calls for women's health strategy* UN Women: Covid-19 is 'most discriminatory crisis' for women* Women keep dying of preventable cervical cancer while self-test screening delayedROBERT KITCHIN/Stuff Conservation minister Kiritapu Allan is taking a leave of absence after being diagnosed with stage 3 cervical cancer. It’s troubling that the cervical smear screening programme is backlogged because of Covid-19, with 22,000 women waiting for tests. There is an alternative to the intimate procedure, a self test for the Human Papillomavirus (HPV), which causes almost all cervical cancer. That’s why we don’t have a national health strategy, and why the Government is able to ignore calls for more funding and to overhaul women’s health services.

Source: Stuff April 10, 2021 17:00 UTC