Women’s ‘brave stories’ spark $250m health funding injection

The government will spend $250 million on more than 30 new initiatives that address gender health inequality in Queensland, to be announced by the Health Minister on Monday as part of Women’s Week.

Health Minister Shannon Fentiman on Sunday. Picture: Steve Pohlner

The government will spend $250 million on more than 30 new initiatives that address gender health inequality in Queensland, to be announced by the Health Minister on Monday as part of Women’s Week.

The investment is the latest funding drop to come from Queensland’s $1 billion Women and Girls’ Health Strategy.

Health Minister Shannon Fentiman said the strategy had been shaped by extensive community consultation, including a government survey which attracted 12,000 responses.

“Women and girls of Queensland have bravely shared thousands of stories of being dismissed and misdiagnosed in our health system, leading to years of persistent pain and worse health outcomes,” she said.

“We know that one of the issues that came up repeatedly was access to mental health services, and I’m so proud that we are investing tens of millions of dollars into new and improved initiatives to deal with this issue.”

Mental health services will see a $26.9 million cash injections for extra social workers and another $10 million will go towards a walk-in women’s health hub in Far North Queensland.

Ms Fentiman on Sunday announced $46 million would be used to fund four nurse-led women’s health clinics across the state and last week announced a $18 million investment to expand the virtual and telephone mental health services available to women.

Queensland’s state parliament will this week debate legislation targeted towards women’s health and safety including allowing nurses and midwives to prescribe abortion pills and coercive control and affirmative consent.

‘The TGA (Therapeutic Good Administration) has now approved two step to be used in medical terminations of pregnancies to be prescribed by nurses and midwives,” Ms Fentiman said.

“We’ve introduced a bill we were the first jurisdiction to introduce legislation to put that into effect and that will be debated this week in the parliament.

“We’ll also be debating affirmative consent, coercive control.”

Ms Fentiman said she was interested to see how the LNP would vote on both pieces of legislation.

“(Opposition Leader) David Crisafulli talks a big game on how he wants to support women, but so far his track record on voting for women’s health issues has been pretty atrocious,” she said.

“He voted against taking termination of pregnancy out of the Criminal Code.

“It’ll be very interesting to see whether or not his party comes on board to support affirmative consent to support coercive control and to support the ability of women in northern regional Queensland to access what is local health care.”

The government is expected to outline where the full $1 billion Women and Girls’ Health Strategy fund has been spent on Monday.