Why women with spinal cord injuries deserve better: A call to prioritise women’s health in the NHS

Louise Gardner, Senior Associate in our Serious Injuries Team, and her colleagues in our national serious injury team support the Spinal Injuries Association’s (SIA) petition to seek funding to improve healthcare for women with disabilities.

Awareness of women’s health has been gaining long-overdue attention in recent years, yet there remains a significant gap in care provision for women living with complex health needs, particularly those with spinal cord injuries.

Petition from the SIA

The Spinal Injuries Association (SIA) has launched a petition urging the Government to prioritise spinal cord injury (SCI) in its upcoming Women’s Health Strategy for England.

My colleagues and I work closely with people affected by life changing spinal cord injury. We fully support this initiative and encourage others across the legal, healthcare, and rehabilitation sectors to do so too.

The problems faced by women with spinal cord injuries

Women with spinal cord injury and other long-term conditions like multiple sclerosis, spina bifida, and Parkinson’s disease, face a range of unique and often overlooked health challenges. These issues range from continence and pain management to menstrual health, menopause, breast and cervical screenings and pregnancy care.

Yet the current NHS framework doesn’t go far enough to address their needs. Many women are left feeling marginalised, uninformed, and unsupported.

Spinal cord injury doesn’t just impact mobility, it affects almost every aspect of a person’s health and wellbeing. For women, this can mean:

• Inadequate access to gynaecological care
• Poorly managed menstrual health
• Insufficient support around fertility, pregnancy and menopause
• A lack of professional knowledge about how spinal cord injury interacts with female anatomy and hormone cycles
• Limited access to breast screening equipment

These issues left unsupported can lead to poorer outcomes, lower quality of life, and ultimately, health inequalities.

Breast screenings

Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer in the UK and sadly around 12,000 women in the UK die from breast cancer every year. Early detection is key and breast screening can save about one life for every 200 women who are screened.

However, despite progress in medicine and equality policies, the traditional mammogram machines often aren’t suitable for wheelchair users, leading to missed or incomplete scans. It is surprising that equipment to account for those with spinal cord injury or other disability is not available.

Often due to the lack of upper body strength of the spinal cord injury patient, it is not possible to position a woman safely and mammograms cannot be performed or they only image part of the breast and are therefore not of diagnostic quality.

Jane Hudson was diagnosed with breast cancer after not being able to have her first mammogram. Speaking to the SIA, she said:

“Four years ago, I was unable to have my first mammogram due to my limited mobility linked to a spinal injury. Later that year, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Had I been able to have a mammogram it would have been picked up earlier.”

Female health screenings

Women with disabilities, particularly wheelchair users, can face significant barriers in accessing breast screening and smear tests due to a lack of accessible equipment in many medical facilities across the UK.

Fixed-height inspection platforms in GP surgeries can prevent many wheelchair users from transferring safely, leading to rushed or incomplete exams. According to the SIA, over 60% of women with disabilities report difficulties accessing screenings and a second study found nearly two-thirds had not been able to attend smear tests.

Additionally, maternity services and reproductive health care are lacking, with many women discouraged from having children due to insufficient medical support. The issues don’t stop there as we also have to consider the mental health impact. Living with spinal cord injury can cause or worsen depression and anxiety, and mental health care is often inaccessible or under-resourced for these women.

What needs to happen

As the SIA rightly points out, women living with spinal cord injury should not be an afterthought in healthcare planning. Their needs must be recognised, researched, and integrated into the core of the Women’s Health Strategy. The SIA is calling for the government to:

• Increase funding to equip every medical facility with accessible equipment.
• Provide accessible cancer screenings for all women, without exclusion or fear of substandard care.
• Train healthcare professionals to deliver inclusive, informed, and compassionate care.