For too many of us, it began in cold waiting rooms with pain as our only companion. We were told, again and again, that our suffering was just part of being a woman. No one told us it had a name. No one told us it was endometriosis.

We are the She Deserves Care community: women from Pakistan, India, and across Asia living with endometriosis and adenomyosis, and everyone who stands with us. We speak different languages and live under different governments, but our stories are the same. We have waited years to be believed. We have sat across from doctors who were never taught what this disease was, and walked out still undiagnosed, still in pain. We have been called lazy, dramatic, difficult. Some of us have been abandoned or taunted for infertility. All of us have been made to feel that our agony was a character flaw or because we are too dramatic.

Endometriosis affects roughly one in ten women and girls of reproductive age, around 190 million worldwide. Yet it takes an average of seven to ten years for a woman to be diagnosed. Across much of Asia, the wait is often longer, because the systems around us were never built to see us. This is not a private misfortune. It is a silent emergency affecting millions of women in our region, and it is time it was treated like one.

We call on Ministries of Health across Asia, and on the World Health Organization's regional offices, to declare endometriosis a women's health emergency and act on four fronts.

Recognition. Endometriosis and adenomyosis must be formally recognized as serious public health conditions, not dismissed as ordinary period pain. Recognition is what unlocks funding, data, and policy.

Education. Endometriosis must be a required part of every medical degree, so every doctor qualifies knowing how to spot it, alongside ongoing training for practising gynaecologists in modern diagnosis and excision surgery.

Access. Affordable specialist care must exist within public health systems, so no woman is forced to travel abroad or left untreated because of what she can afford.

Awareness. Public health campaigns to break the silence and stigma, so women stop being told their pain is imagined, lazy, or their own fault.

We are not asking for pity. We are asking to be seen, believed, and cared for in the countries we call home. Whether you live with this disease yourself or simply refuse to accept a world where women are left to suffer in silence, add your name.

She deserves care. We all do.

Sign the open letter below to make Endometriosis Specialists available in Pakistan:
An Open Letter from the She Deserves Care Community: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1KJhMBwLBoIxUzdDU0pIQ-BCr5HDmMKl99o6IjaSxIT0/edit