Women’s Healthcare, the UAE’s most comprehensive exhibition dedicated to the wellbeing of women in the Middle East, running alongside The Bride Show Dubai, represents a recognition among medical professionals that when it comes to healthcare, products and services should not be delivered in a blanket fashion but must be targeted at specific audiences.
The needs of women and children are particular and health spending by women for themselves and their family makes up a huge proportion of the market. Yet at the same time these needs are often underrepresented, with many women in the region suffering from a chronic lack of medical provision and education specifically designed for them.
Breast cancer is the most prevalent type of cancer among UAE women but, with early detection and education, it is one of the most treatable forms of the disease.
The London Breast Clinic has recently completed an audit of its five year survival rate for patients diagnosed between 1998 and 2002. In all cases of invasive cancer during this period patient survival rate is 92 per cent. Local breast cancer recurrence rates for the same period are 2.6 per cent. However, women in the UAE often present themselves at hospitals at a late stage of the disease, which makes treatment far more difficult.
Philippa Clayton, Nurse Manager at the Tawam Hospital Breast Care Center, said, “We can only speculate about the reasons for late presentation of the disease but they would include modesty and disinclination for women to examine themselves, fear of diagnosis and fear of medical intervention, reliance on tribal medicine, fear of rejection by their husbands, and above all, lack of information about screening and early detection.”
Women’s Healthcare will have representatives of Tawam Hospiatal Breast Care Center and The London Breast Clinic on hand to discuss any issues related to the disease, provide education and arrange screenings.
Another important element of the exhibition is homeopathic treatment. Homeopathic medicine is a key strand of Complementary and Alternative Medicine and is specifically used to target hormonal issues, helping women with menopause, menstruation and skin complaints.
This form of treatment, like the exhibition itself, represents a shift to a more reactive and patient-orientated form of medical care. The trend has been identified in the USA where doctors, initially responding to patient pressure, have started to integrate complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) into a standard course of treatment. For instance, all 18 hospitals on U.S. News’s most recent "America’s Best Hospitals" provide CAM of some type. Also 36 US teaching hospitals are blending CAM with conventional care. The UCSF Medical Center, the Stanford Medical Hospital and the UCLA Medical Centre, now implement complementary medicine as a part of their healthcare provision.
According to statistics released by the National Institute of Health in the USA, CAM is one of the fastest growing features of modern medicine with 43 per cent of women and 12 per cent of children using it on a regular basis.
Against a national average of 38 per cent, use of complementary medicine rises to 43 per cent amongst high-earners and 55 per cent amongst the most highly educated. These statistics perfectly map onto the demographics of the audience of Women’s Healthcare.
In 2008, 62 per cent of visitors were 30 years or older, 85 per cent were privately insured and 49 per cent were married with children. This is why companies like UltraMed, a Dubai-based distributor of European homeopathic medicines, feel that their presence at Women’s Healthcare is important.
Dr. Sassan Behjat, Founder of Medblend Integrative Medicine Consultancy in California and Managing Director of UltraMed Dubai, said, “Homeopathy is usually favoured by women for themselves and their children because it is safe, natural and often obviates the need for harsher forms of intervention.
“Commercial children’s medicines, including allergy remedies and cough syrups, have often not undergone clinical testing on the infants at whom they are marketed. That is not to say that they are at all dangerous for children, but many parents now prefer to use them in tandem with more natural, homeopathic remedies.”
Given that women are larger spenders than men on medicine and medical treatments, homeopathy represents a significant and growing market, especially in the Middle East where there is an increased focus on provision of healthcare.
UltraMed’s Dr. Behjat will be on hand at the exhibition to provide answers to queries on all forms of homeopathic and complementary medicine.
Other exhibitors include Del Monte and Health Factory, companies dedicated to the provision of healthy food to women as a part of their non-stop schedules.
Del Monte has recently started to supply prepared fruit and vegetables at McDonalds and at service stations across the UAE in a bid to encourage a regular intake of vitamins and minerals that only these foods can provide.
Health Factory provides weight loss programmes to help people to change their lifestyle and food habits in order to lose weight or maintain a healthy weight.
Women’s Healthcare runs alongside The Bride Show Dubai, 8-11 April 2009, at Dubai International Exhibition Centre.
