Coinciding with International Women’s Day on March 8th, FOIA and HPN held the Come-Unity Interactive Session themed Women’s Health on March 13th. The event commenced with the Acknowledgement of Country and Welcome Song, a Hindi Women’s Anthem performed by Siri Dhamathmari, another youth HPN member and educational psychologist.

The first of the session was storytelling of the patient’s navigation of the health system during times of Covid. Two of the stories were in the patient’s voice, and the third was read out by the panel discussion moderator Dr Vanisri Anand, a GP and HPN member. The stories were on pregnancy complications, endometriosis, a condition causing profound impairment in one’s quality of life and infertility and breast cancer. The general themes from these stories were the inability to see their health professional due to lockdown, delay in seeking treatment, the additional burden of testing before attending hospital appointments, and the long queues for vaccinating when they felt most vulnerable.

The second session was the panel discussion moderated by Dr Vanisri Anand. In the panel were Breast Surgeon Dr Farid Meyabodi, Medical Oncologist Dr Renuka Chittajallu and Obstetrician/Gynaecologist interested in Endometriosis Dr Gemma Blain. The session commenced with questions relating to the stories above, after which the audience was able to ask questions via Mentimeter, which were then directed to the panellists.

The third session was titled “Healthy Relationships, Healthy Families”, where Mrs Sunila Kotwal of Seva International shared issues about domestic violence in subcontinental communities. This topic was selected as lockdown, and social isolation increased the prevalence of domestic violence. She presented videos depicting the insidiousness of domestic violence using video clips in Hindi. The talk’s objective was to recognise it was the community’s responsibility to ‘Say something when they see something.’

The fourth session was “Covid Positive Updates”. Dr Harini Lakshmi Narayana, a GP, HPN member, outlined the Covid symptoms, the latest guidelines on isolation for close contacts and new treatments available.