Responding to remarks made by Dr Hans Nagar, the South Belfast MLA stated: “The Alliance Party has long called for a Women’s Health Strategy to tackle precisely this sort of issue, where there is no specific service despite the evident and urgent need for one.
“My own correspondence with the Belfast Trust in October confirmed once again that not only is there no regionally funded endometriosis service, but in fact there is no specific funding for endometriosis services at all. Although the Belfast Trust has established specialist endometriosis clinics, as it stands this is not a requirement.
“This comes on top of the ongoing backlog of cases from the pandemic, but I have received assurances that theatre capacity is back to pre-pandemic levels in Belfast from this month.
“There was a business proposal for a Regional Endometriosis Service a decade ago, but this was rejected. This rejection seems to have been astonishingly short-sighted, and I would hope that a high priority for any incoming Minister would be the urgent establishment of a regional service with dedicated funding and resources.”