The majority of women with menopausal symptoms and requiring treatment can be managed appropriately by their GP. However, a proportion of symptomatic women will require specialist medical expertise in menopause, which cannot be dealt with at the primary care level.
As part of the reforms to how we approach menopause care, these more complex cases will be dealt with in six specialist menopause clinics being developed across the country, through a combination of funding from the Women’s Health Fund and Budget 2022.
The first of the dedicated specialist menopause clinics opened in the National Maternity Hospital last December. A second clinic within the University of Limerick Hospital Group is located in the new Regional Women’s Health Hub at Nenagh General Hospital and opened in May 2022. I officially opened the third specialist clinic in the Rotunda in October this year. Since then, the fourth and fifth specialist clinics have opened this November, in University Hospital Galway and the Coombe respectively.
It is anticipated that the final clinic in Cork will open in early 2023, which will result in a total of six such clinics nationwide, one in each maternity network, for women who require complex, specialist care.
