State-funded HRT 'should include menopausal women under 40'
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Calls have been made to include younger women in plans to fund HRT, with one expert warning that women often struggle silently with the cost of this medication.
It emerged on Monday that the Department of Health is costing a proposal to fund HRT (hormone replacement therapy) for women in menopause. Details will be published in the coming weeks.
While menopause is usually associated with older women, separate government data shows around 1 in 100 women experience menopause before 40 years of age.
Figures from the Daisy Network, a support network for women experiencing early menopause, further show one in 1,000 women under 30 and one in 10,000 under 20 experience this condition.
Deirdre Lundy, a GP specialist in menopause and lead medical officer at the Complex Menopause Service in the National Maternity Hospital, said a monthly supply can come to €50 a month. Dr Lundy said: “It will make a difference to a lot of women, there is a silent struggling group out there that don’t make themselves known."
“Money is so embarrassing for some people. I’m sure there are people for whom I’ve prescribed who no longer use partly because of finance.”
Many of her patients are young women who entered menopause early for various reasons.
“I had an early menopause clinic today, so all those people will be in their teens, 20s, middle-30s,”
She added: “HRT is not a lifestyle thing for them, it is an essential.
"You cannot be a young person without sex hormones of some kind, you expose yourself to huge health problems as you age.”
Dr Lundy said she can prescribe the contraceptive pill for free but that HRT costs anything from €30 to €50 a month.
As the contraceptive pill also contains oestrogen, it can offer some protective health benefits to this group.
“It’s a little less freaky at 22, rolling into the pharmacy for your monthly prescription of the pill than it is to go in for your patches and Utrogestan. That’s embarrassing for them,” she said.
In her experience, these women often face questioning in pharmacies about whether they should be on HRT in addition to the financial burden.
“I’m delighted, any little nod in our direction is welcome,” she said of the planned funding.
— people under 30, under 40 — nobody should have to make a decision on ‘will I put my oestrogen back in my body through the pill or HRT based on money alone?'
“The quality choice is HRT, it should certainly be free for people under a certain age also, because for those people it is not really a choice. And they should not have a price barrier to that.”
A Department of Health spokeswoman said Health Minister Stephen Donnelly intends to introduce a free HRT scheme for women, and that “details are being finalised by officials”.
There are now six public menopause clinics including in Cork and Nenagh.