Rajini Vaidyanathan is an award-winning journalist and news presenter at the BBC, renowned for her broad international experience spanning over two decades. She has served as a presenter, anchor, and foreign correspondent, reporting from regions including South Asia, Washington, and Westminster.

Rajini openly shares her experiences living with endometriosis, highlighting the challenges many women face in gaining recognition and treatment for this condition.
Her symptoms included debilitating pain, extreme fatigue, and abnormal bleeding. She was diagnosed after 10 years, having continually being told it was ‘just her fibroids’. On a visit to the emergency room, Rajini was suspected to have cancer. It was only on a follow up appointment that she was told her bowel was fused to her womb, and that she had infiltrating endometriosis.

“I was told all the time ‘it’s just your period’. [Endometriosis] has been in the dark for so long, even people I know who tangentially work in the medical field don’t know much about it. It’s not something there is much awareness of. If more people don’t speak out about it it’s just this very long word that no one understands.”