Women's Health Care Needs Might Be Unmet During Deployment.

2001 FEB 8 - (NewsRx.com) -- Nearly half of the U.S. military women in a recent study are not comfortable going on sick call for symptoms of genitourinary infections when they are deployed to a field duty station or multi-week ship duty.

"In typical deployment circumstances, particularly during war or situations where the unit is constantly on the move, maintaining personal hygiene is difficult. Women need a reasonable self-care alternative to seeking medical treatment when deployed."

Almost one in four say they simply will not seek medical treatment while deployed, the study suggests. Ohio State University researchers surveyed 841 women - enlisted and officers - on their perspectives of military health care services and their health experiences at their home bases and when deployed to other parts of the world.

Women's health is an important issue for the military because female soldiers who are deployed may run an increased risk of developing vaginal or urinary tract infections, said Nancy Ryan-Wenger, a study co-author and a professor of nursing at Ohio State University. Many of the 367,000 women in the U.S. military may be deployed to developing countries, combat situations, sea duty, or other situations in which normal hygiene practices may be impossible.

The study bears out that concern. Nearly half (42%) of the women reported that symptoms from urinary tract infections or vaginitis had at some time compromised their duty performance, while nearly one-quarter (24%) of the women said that symptoms had caused them to lose duty time - from several hours to an average of almost 3-1/2 days per deployment.

The study appeared in Women's Health Issues. Ryan-Wenger co-authored the study with Nancy Lowe, an associate professor of nursing at Ohio State. The top three of 14 different reasons that women in this study cited for avoiding treatment during deployment were a lack of confidence in the provider's abilities and embarrassment (both 15%), and a lack of confidentiality (14%).

One reason many women may lack confidence is that the typical health care provider deployed with troops is a medic trained to save lives, not to treat primary care concerns, Ryan-Wenger said. Moreover, women are often too embarrassed to seek medical attention because of the small community that forms in a military unit during deployment.