00:00 Making bags of hope for women with gynaecological cancer, Vicki Pennell knows the disease all
00:07 too well.
00:09 She discovered she had uterine cancer when she started bleeding after menopause.
00:14 A short time later, she had a complete hysterectomy.
00:18 The minute that you get diagnosed with a gynaecological cancer and you have to have surgery, you can
00:25 say that your life has changed forever because your body is no longer the same.
00:31 Vicki is now cancer free, but lives with hot flushes, erratic sleep and chronic swelling.
00:38 Uterine cancer, which mainly affects older women, is rising as the population ages and
00:43 increases.
00:45 The latest national data shows the number of diagnoses has doubled in the past two decades.
00:51 Some of the risk factors for endometrial cancer include increasing age, being overweight,
00:58 smoking.
01:00 In Tasmania, there are two specialists who treat every gynaecological cancer patient
01:05 in the state, supported by just one specialist nurse.
01:10 Services are based in Hobart, with a weekly outreach clinic in Launceston.
01:15 It's completely inadequate.
01:16 It is not enough.
01:17 It's not even close to it.
01:19 We need more services in Tasmania, but we certainly need more services in the north
01:24 and northwest coast.
01:25 The Tasmanian Department of Health says outpatients are being seen within clinically recommended
01:30 timeframes and work on the statewide cancer services plan will begin later in the year.
01:36 The Federal Health Department spends less than $2 million a year on relevant research.
01:42 It just seems to me that everything with women's cancer is concentrated from the navel up and
01:49 there's nothing from the navel down.
01:51 Vicki believes there should be a greater effort to fight cancer below the belt.
01:55 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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