And women with “non-urgent” cases are facing a wait time of up to six months.
Canterbury District Health Board executive director of planning, funding and decision support Carolyn Gullery said the classification of urgent and non-urgent patients was done on a case-by-case basis.
“The current wait list for elective gynaecological surgeries is 718. This includes those who are about to be seen, are booked in and have a confirmed date for their procedure.
“Currently we are prioritising urgent gynaecological cases, which includes potential malignancy. Some endometriosis cases will be prioritised,” she said.
Ms Gullery said a lack of capacity and a number of factors out of the CDHB’s control had caused the backlog of cases. These factors included the resident medical officer strikes, the March 15 shootings and the closure of the
outpatients building due to flooding.
She is confident the current situation can be resolved by the end of the year.
The Counties Manukau District Health Board had to deny women with “non-urgent” gynaecological problems, such as endometriosis and incontinence, due to being too busy.
Endometriosis New Zealand president Deborah Bush thought it was woeful that only some endometriosis cases are being treated as urgent by the CDHB.
Endometriosis is a disease where tissue that normally lines the uterus grows outside of it, causing severe pain during periods, sex, urination and other situations.
“This is a serious and major public health issue and I call it calculated neglect.”
Miss Bush said the wait list did not account for the thousands of other women out there suffering from the disease.
“The reality is there are 120,000 girls and women with endometriosis in New Zealand based on the population. This means that roughly one in 10 women in New Zealand will have endometriosis. We are looking at about 12,000 to 14,000 in the Canterbury DHB region.”
CDHB member Jo Kane said she found this concerning.
“I think the situation with this department is concerning but we also have a lot of other specialties that are behind and that is due to the year that we have had, but I think we are making a really good go at trying to get back to normal.”
