Are doctors taking miscarriages seriously?

Do women receive enough support when they have a miscarriage, or are doctors shying away from the seriousness of this devastating experience?

When William Hague spoke out about his wife Ffion having suffered from several miscarriages, he helped raise awareness of a problem that is often drastically underplayed.

Thousands of women every year suffer in silence, unable to come to terms with losing a child and, ultimately, unable to find out what is wrong with them.

A miscarriage usually occurs in the first 3 months of pregnancy and is extremely common, affecting 2 in every 10 pregnancies resulting in around 150,000 miscarriages a year.

But are our doctors really tackling the problem? Tina O’Doherty, 34, a businesswoman from Edinburgh was ‘desperate for a diagnosis’, revealing that ‘at least if you have one, you can start to work out how best to treat it. I would have done anything, undergone any treatment, but because doctors couldn’t find a reason, there was nothing I, or anyone could do to prevent it happening again.'

In addition, Dr Hassan Shehata, Medical Director of The Miscarriage Clinic, London says that ‘many patients are being short-changed by the way the NHS and the medical profession deal with recurrent miscarriage.' She goes on to confess that, ‘we are not giving many of these women and their partners the treatment they deserve. It is not seen as a serious condition.'

What do you think about Dr Shehata’s statement? Do you think women have enough medical support to help us though this difficult experience? What do you think could be done better by the NHS? Join the debate below...

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