Karen has waited for ‘urgent’ surgery since 2022, a painful symbol of Tasmania’s dire health crisis

Endless waitlists, ambulance ramping scandals, almost no bulk-billing: health has dominated the state election campaign but has any party got the answers?

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When Launceston woman Kristy Wagg, 40, had her daughter in 2016 it was a difficult birth – she had a third-degree perineal tear and needed surgery to recover.

“This is where things take a turn,” she said. “I started to not be able to go to the toilet to defecate. The urgency was there but I could just not go.”