KRISTY RAM­NAR­INE

kristy.ram­nar­ine@cnc3.co.tt

For years, Dr Nadya Wat­son has been a steady, com­pas­sion­ate pres­ence for pa­tients fac­ing life’s most dif­fi­cult mo­ments. As a pal­lia­tive care physi­cian, she built her ca­reer on of­fer­ing com­fort, dig­ni­ty, and un­der­stand­ing when they were need­ed most.

But late­ly, her fo­cus has shift­ed to an­oth­er group who of­ten feel over­looked—women nav­i­gat­ing the changes of per­i­menopause and menopause.

Through a new part­ner­ship with Bio­Con­nect Med­ical Cen­tre in Bar­ba­dos, Dr Wat­son is now on a mis­sion to en­sure women in Trinidad and To­ba­go have ac­cess not on­ly to prop­er med­ical care but al­so to the guid­ance and sup­port that make this stage of life less daunt­ing.

The jour­ney, she ad­mit­ted, be­gan close to home. What be­gan as a per­son­al awak­en­ing has grown in­to a pas­sion project: break­ing the si­lence, dis­pelling the myths, and help­ing women em­brace this new chap­ter with con­fi­dence.

Dr Wat­son–who has been prac­tis­ing for over 20 years–can­did­ly ad­mit­ted that her med­ical train­ing of­fered lit­tle prepa­ra­tion for un­der­stand­ing per­i­menopause and menopause.

“In med­ical school, we on­ly learnt the de­f­i­n­i­tion of menopause, which is 12 months with­out a pe­ri­od. That was it,” she ex­plained.

“I thought it was just hot flush­es. When my mum com­plained of in­som­nia and anx­i­ety, I brushed it off be­cause I didn’t un­der­stand what she was go­ing through.”

Her out­look shift­ed in 2024 when a pa­tient spoke about the need for work­place pro­to­cols for per­i­menopause and menopause.

That con­ver­sa­tion pushed her to be­gin re­search­ing, and she quick­ly recog­nised the symp­toms in her­self: hot flush­es, in­som­nia, and anx­i­ety. She al­so re­alised that many of her pa­tients pre­sent­ing with joint pain, frozen shoul­der, ring­ing in the ears, or elec­tric-shock sen­sa­tions were not strug­gling with psy­chi­atric con­di­tions but per­i­menopause and menopause.

“I was guilty of send­ing my pa­tients to psy­chi­a­trists be­cause I didn’t know bet­ter,” she ad­mit­ted.

“But then I start­ed lis­ten­ing, re­search­ing, and see­ing the pat­terns. That’s when I launched my own menopause clin­ic.”

The clin­ic grew rapid­ly, draw­ing women from across T&T. Yet one ma­jor chal­lenge re­mained: lim­it­ed ac­cess to hor­mone re­place­ment ther­a­py (HRT). On­ly two op­tions–An­geliq and Prog­y­no­va–were avail­able lo­cal­ly, and both had se­ri­ous draw­backs. Prog­y­no­va, used for women with­out a uterus, dis­ap­peared from the mar­ket, while An­geliq was dif­fi­cult to find.

“Women were lit­er­al­ly hunt­ing around phar­ma­cies to find these treat­ments,” Dr Wat­son said.

“Tablets are out­dat­ed and car­ry high­er risks of blood clots. Glob­al­ly, the stan­dard now is patch­es, gels, and sprays. That’s what Bio­Con­nect of­fered, and that’s why I reached out.”

Through her sis­ter and sis­ter-in-law in Bar­ba­dos, Dr Wat­son learnt of Bio­Con­nect Med­ical Cen­tre, a hub for ad­vanced women’s health so­lu­tions. She soon con­nect­ed with Dr Mar­ti­na To­by, a British Menopause So­ci­ety-trained spe­cial­ist, and Dr Rober­ta Coro­na, an ob­ste­tri­cian/gy­nae­col­o­gist with a PhD in Bio­med­ical Sci­ences from the Catholic Uni­ver­si­ty of Leu­ven, Bel­gium. To­geth­er, they forged a part­ner­ship to ex­pand ac­cess to mod­ern HRT op­tions.

Now, pa­tients in T&T can re­ceive ev­i­dence-based ther­a­pies such as patch­es, gels and sprays de­liv­ered di­rect­ly to their homes.

“This part­ner­ship means my pa­tients can fi­nal­ly ac­cess the right treat­ments with­out un­nec­es­sary stress or risk,” said Dr Wat­son.

“Women de­serve bet­ter op­tions, and with Bio­Con­nect, we can make that hap­pen.” The re­sults have been trans­for­ma­tive. “Women would come in, and I could see the glow in their faces. They would say, ‘Dr, that was a life­saver.’

“You can see the dif­fer­ence: weight loss, sleep­ing bet­ter, less anx­i­ety. They have a bet­ter qual­i­ty of life, and every­thing to me is based on qual­i­ty of life, be­cause life is very short.”

Be­yond her clin­i­cal work, Dr Wat­son has em­braced ad­vo­ca­cy through her so­cial me­dia plat­form, “Top Tips”, where she shares her ex­pe­ri­ences and ed­u­cates women about per­i­menopause and menopause.

Her open ap­proach has res­onat­ed wide­ly, spark­ing con­ver­sa­tions across work­places and com­mu­ni­ties, with more women call­ing for struc­tured menopause sup­port poli­cies.

Her own sis­ters are al­so nav­i­gat­ing symp­toms, re­in­forc­ing the re­al­i­ty that menopause is a uni­ver­sal yet of­ten over­looked stage of life.