There are no relevant regulations, so the practice leaves much to be desired. Women with disabilities who want to get checked out either drive hundreds of kilometers or count on the understanding of a gynecologist or a partner who will help them get into the chair. This is a really serious problem.
A gynecological chair is equipment necessary to perform a gynecological examination. For most Polish women with mobility problems – unavailable. Mrs. Agata Roczniak from Wrocław has to go to the gynecologist with her husband. The husband must pick her up, place her in the chair, and then remove her from the chair.
– Piotrek lifts me to the gynecological chair and I choose it, but I am aware that it shouldn't look like this – says Agata Roczniak.
There are no offices adapted for women with disabilities
Gynecologist Mrs. Marta Lorczyk from Warsaw also does not have a suitable chair for a woman with a disability. – I suggested whether the tests could be performed on a couch, but at first the gynecologist was not convinced by this idea – says Marta Lorczyk.
Because he didn't know how to perform such an examination on a couch, but he finally agreed. Many women with limited mobility, however, either do not have – like Mrs. Agata – a partner who could carry them, or do not want to ask gynecologists for the grace to examine them on a couch. So they travel around Poland, looking for adapted offices. However, it is not easy. According to the “Avalon” Foundation, there is not a single one like this in the Lubelskie and Świętokrzyskie Voivodeships.
– When it comes to gynecological care, women with disabilities in Poland often have to travel dozens, if not hundreds of kilometers to get to a fully adapted gynecological office – says Żaneta Krysiak, head of the Sekson Project of the “Avalon” Foundation.
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An adapted gynecological office is one that not only has a lowerable chair with a lift, but also employs appropriately trained doctors with a sufficient level of empathy and sensitivity. Mrs. Bogumiła Siedlecka was examined by a gynecologist for the first time in her life when she was 20 years old.
“I was laughed at”
– My previous visits to the gynecologist ended with them talking to my mother, not me, and not examining me at all, but asking if I was on my period – recalls Bogumiła Siedlecka-Goślicka.
Unfortunately, humiliation of women with disabilities during gynecological visits is not uncommon. – I also heard unfavorable opinions from girls who came back after such a gynecological service and said, for example: “you know what, Agata? I was laughed at for wanting to get pregnant,” says Agata Roczniak.
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However, pregnancy is often the beginning of further challenges and humiliations, because a pregnant woman should also weigh herself at the gynecologist.
– If in the entire district a woman in a wheelchair has no place to weigh herself, that is, she has to go to a vet or a mechanic, how can she have a properly managed pregnancy? – Marta Lorczyk asks.
There are no regulations in Poland that would require the adaptation of gynecological offices to the needs of women with disabilities.
Main photo source: TVN24