An Oldham-based charity that advocates for better understanding of women's health conditions heard about new research that would stifle pain for millions of women.

The charity, Endometriosis Awareness North, which was created by the Oldham GP, Dr Anita Sharma, held an event where attendees were among the first to hear about a new research project programme that hopes to curb the effects of the crippling condition, endometriosis.

Pelvic condition endometriosis harms up to 82 per cent of its victims so badly that many cannot carry out mundane, simple tasks.

Yet despite affecting one in ten women of childbearing age, most sufferers are starved from a formal diagnosis until they are 27.

Professor Kay Marshall, professor of reproductive endocrine pharmacology and head of the school of health sciences at Manchester University, met with the charity and revealed a glimmer of hope for the future.

She said a new research programme has been launched that promises to look into diagnosing the condition with more haste, reducing its side effects, restoring fertility, preventing the return of the disease and, crucially, reducing mental health problems that often come hand-in-hand with the condition.

The professor said the study is being conducted by using tissue samples from hundreds of women volunteers across the north west who suffer from endometriosis. 

Dr Sharma said: “Curbing endometriosis is one of the world’s biggest unmet medical challenges and some of my fellow clinicians do not know how to spot it and/or deal with it.

"Ignorance and lack of awareness fuels this, but health prejudice towards women also plays a part.

"If this were a condition that rendered ten per cent of men incapacitated, I wonder how long it would take to find a cure?”

The Oldham doctor pointed out disparities between men's and women's healthcare and used the platform to call for more to be invested into breast and ovarian cancer screening - and for more empathy to be shown to women going through menopause. 

She added: “Over three quarters of women feel that the health service has not listened to their needs and so I am glad that like Scotland before them, our Government now has a women’s health strategy.

"The battle we face is illustrated best by endometriosis.

"Just a fifth of the population has even heard the word, let alone has an understanding of it.

"Our small Oldham-based charity has made amazingly swift in-roads, but the first challenge is to raise awareness of the physical, economic and mental health consequences of endometriosis.

"Join us and start the battle against this blight here, in the borough of Oldham.”