This past month MHSA has been campaigning for women’s health in a series of events to raise awareness, inform and create a safe space to speak up.
‘The MHSA Women’s Health Campaign’ was launched earlier this month leading up to women’s day with three main targets in mind. These targets being the protection of women, awareness on health conditions specific to women, and athleticism in women.
The campaign pushes for a multi-faceted insight into women’s health. For instance, rather than just informing on how women may suffer from dysmenorrhea (pain on menstruation), we aim to delve further into; how debilitating this is and whether it affects an athlete when they perform or train.
This, along with many other issues and challenges that they face, will be discussed with an upcoming Q&A panel of female athletes – ‘Public Cervix Announcement’. Some of these other issues shall include women not being taken seriously enough in the sport, reproductive pressure from society, the development of what is deemed as a ‘masculine’ figure’ and many more.
With incidents of attack on the rise, our self-defence class, ‘Fight Like a Girl’, was aimed to teach individuals how to defend themselves should the need arise. Evidence shows that HIV, abortion and depression rates are higher in women who have experienced physical or sexual violence.
Besides teaching defence, this campaign is also important for aspiring health care professionals. The class prepared students to be well-informed in their future profession when faced with patients that will have undergone some form of abuse or attack. MHSA believes that this is essential in creating a more understanding society in the future and lessening the stigma around abuse.
Of course, every event is open to any gender albeit ultimately targeted at women due to the title and aim of the campaign.
Our third event, ‘Cycle for your Cycle’, is a bike ride that will take place in Mġarr. This event is aimed to raise awareness about conditions that are not so commonly heard – conditions that are not popularised as much as say, breast cancer that has worldwide campaigns in ‘Pink October’.
Along the route of the bike ride, information points will be set up with more details and facts about the conditions. The two conditions that will be focused on are gynaecological; endometriosis and PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome). Endometriosis affects on average one in ten women of reproductive age. PCOS is one of the most common endocrine disorders in women in the same criteria with a prevalence of 4-16%.
