While many cancers are on the decline, the number of Australian women diagnosed with uterine cancer has doubled in the last 20 years, and is forecast to continue to grow. There's concern over limited funding and access to services, while many people don't even know it exists.
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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]