Cervical cancer and ovarian cancer only affect women. So why has the NHS been quietly erasing the word ‘women’ from information pages on its official website?
According to the Mail, NHS advice pages on these conditions were edited at the beginning of the year to remove references to the word ‘woman’.
Last year, women seeking information about cervical cancer were told that, ‘cervical cancer develops in a woman’s cervix (the entrance to the womb from the vagina). It mainly affects sexually active women aged between 30 and 45.’ But in 2022, the advice reads, ‘cervical cancer is a cancer that is found anywhere in the cervix, [and] the cervix is the opening between the vagina and the womb (uterus).’
Similarly, women looking for information online were previously told that ‘Ovarian cancer, or cancer of the ovaries, is one of the most common types of cancer in women.’ Now they are only informed by the health service that ‘Anyone with ovaries can get ovarian cancer’.
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