Women S Health

Traditionally, the medical management of women's health has left something to be desired. Compared to the care and consideration given men, women have had to take a back seat in health care. The "little-known" killer of women referred to in your article was well-known throughout the decades. Women, however, have been treated like children by our esteemed medical practitioners. Even today, a woman patient is addressed by her first name when meeting a new physician in a medical setting.

A new study shows that women who work outside the home may enjoy better health than those who don't. What about the popular image of women who enter the male-dominated workplace falling victim to ulcers or keeling over from heart attacks? As it turns out, more opportunities for women in the working world seem not to translate into more opportunities for poor health. Researchers at UC San Diego tracked 242 white women in Rancho Bernardo, a San Diego suburb.

I am extremely infuriated that Jack Miller, head of Orange County's Environmental Health Division, has decided to terminate the inspection program for mammography facilities in Orange County and turn it over to the state (July 24). The program has been successful for 34 years. The prospect of having to deal with some bureaucrat in Sacramento when a problem arises is alarming. I strongly protest the decision to end the program and will fight to keep local control. Women's health has been placed on the back burner for too long.

We agree that "the makeup of the eventual new government" in Afghanistan is of immediate and primary importance and we applaud the call for a meeting in Geneva "with invitations to all groups" to create a new and inclusive Afghan government ("A Post-Taliban Plan, Now," editorial, Nov. 13). However, the next regime must represent not only "all regions and ethnic groups" of Afghanistan, but also the largest subset of the Afghan population--and the group that has suffered the most under the Taliban's five-year reign--the nation's women.

Psychoanalyst Robert Nemiroff has a creative way of illustrating the female mid-life crisis. He uses the writings of women poets, including Anne Sexton, Adrienne Rich, Diane di Prima, Maxine Kumin and Edna St. Vincent Millay. For example, Sexton's poem, "Little Girl, My Stringbean, My Lovely Woman," tells of a mother's awe and wonder at seeing her daughter change into a woman.

As professionals in medicine, public health, public administration, law and university teaching, we are deeply concerned about a serious health crisis in California. Governor Deukmejian has cut the state's budget for women's health care and family planning services from $36.2 million to $12 million dollars for fiscal year 1989-90. In the past year, about one-half-million women were served in 473 state-subsidized clinics for contraceptive services, breast and cervical cancer screening, treatment of sexually transmitted diseases, pregnancy testing and counseling, prenatal care, and AIDS antibody testing.

The head of the Food and Drug Administration's women's health office resigned Wednesday in a widening protest over delays in deciding whether the "morning after" contraceptive could be sold without a prescription. Susan F.

When it comes to health, women are constantly scanning their surroundings for signs of trouble, ready with the cough syrup, the thermometer, the doctor's phone number should a target come up on the radar. "Need-seeking devices," Dr. Ana E. Nunez, an internist and director of the women's health education program at Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia, calls them. "We are socialized to find out what others need and to provide it," she says.

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