Investing in women's health

Conditions including dysmenorrhoea (period pain), fibroids and menopausal symptoms will affect around 80% of women in their lifetime. But still, they go under diagnosed and untreated.

The Victorian Government has made important investments in women's health, including funding Victoria’s first clinic focused on women’s heart health and our state’s first ever sexual and reproductive health phoneline. But there’s still more to do.

In this Budget, we’ll give women's health the serious focus and funding it deserves, with:

• $86 million to help parents with their newborn babies, including more access to free Maternal and Child Health services and lactation consultants, additional support for fathers’ groups and multicultural communities, a new early parenting centre and a centre dedicated to Aboriginal families and children. Funding will also support the Baby Bundle program.
• $65 million for 10,800 additional laparoscopies to help treat debilitating endometriosis, which affects one in every nine girls and women.
• $58 million for 20 new women’s health clinics and a dedicated Aboriginal‑led women’s clinic, to overcome some of the barriers to treatment that women face such as cost, confidentiality, geographical location of services, cultural and communication differences. The clinics will mean women can access specialists – gynecologist, urologist, along with specialist nursing and allied health in one spot, making it easier and faster to get the world-class care women need and deserve.
• $50 million to enable more Victorian families to access public fertility care, with up to 3,375 treatment cycles funded each year.
• $12 million for research initiatives that will directly benefit women’s health, such as an inquiry into women’s pain management and early work to establish a Women’s Health Research Institute.
• $10 million to establish nine sexual and reproductive health hubs in addition to the 11 existing hubs and continued funding for the Local Public Health Unit networked hub and spoke primary care model, to provide free or very low cost clinical services that, when they are available through a GP, are associated with out‑of‑pocket costs.
• $5.3 million for a mobile women’s health clinic to improve access for women in regional and remote Victoria to specialised women’s health services.