If you walk into a room with 10 women, chances are 1 of those women is living with Endometriosis: a disease that is both chronic and excruciatingly painful. Currently there is no non-invasive means of diagnosing the disease – nor is there a cure.
And yet, the Endometriosis Problem is as big as Diabetes. Except Endometriosis and Diabetes have a 200 percent research funding gap.
Endometriosis is a chronic pain condition with massive health implications down the line if not managed properly. But Endometriosis research only receives 1 dollar for every 200 dollars spent on Diabetes.
With a statistic like that, it’s unsurprising, but no less disappointing, that Endometriosis takes an average of 7.5 years till it’s diagnosed. The UK government has called to reduce the time to diagnosis of Endometriosis down to 4 years but you have to ask yourself if this were a different condition would 4 years be acceptable?
The disease is excruciatingly painful – so why is that we have decided that 4 years of not understanding what the cause of the agonising cyclical pain is, is acceptable as long as it is ‘only 4 years’ and not longer?