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New research conducted on behalf of Bayer HealthCare, for Self-Care Week 2015 shows that 48 per cent of pharmacy teams think that approximately half of all women avoid seeking help from healthcare professionals regarding their intimate health concerns and just as many feel that women may be suffering in silence due to embarrassment.

The survey also found that pharmacy staff are approached on average between two and three times each week by women presenting with intimate health problems. The vast majority (93 per cent) of pharmacists and pharmacy teams thought that the pharmacist should be a woman's first port of call for health advice; however, lack of confidence was the biggest obstacle to women receiving the advice they need.

In order to help address this embarrassment, the majority of pharmacy staff (98 per cent) believe that being able to offer home self-tests for conditions such as candidiasis and bacterial vaginosis would help encourage patients to self-care for intimate health concerns and overcome barriers to seeking advice.

In addition, 96 per cent of respondents agree that self-tests would also encourage customers to discuss their concerns with a healthcare professional.

Bayer HealthCare has recently launched Canestest, which enables women to confidently and quickly diagnose common vaginal infections, such as thrush or bacterial vaginosis (BV). Canestest is clinically tested to indicate the type of vaginal infection women may have with a simple colour change on the test swab, delivering results in 10 seconds, with over 90 per cent accuracy.