The DIY smear test

Women sent ‘game-changing’ postal kits in bid to cut cervical cancer deaths

WOMEN will be offered DIY smear tests in a bid to cut cervical cancer deaths.

Kits will be sent in the post, enabling women to take their own sample at home and return it to the NHS.

Officials hope it will boost screening coverage by reaching women who have ignored invitations for tests because of embarrassment or difficulties getting an appointment.

Almost 400,000 women have smear tests in Scotland every year, but only around 70 per cent of those who are eligible attend their checks.

Home testing kits have been used in a trial in Dumfriesshire by Dr Heather Currie, associate gynaecologist at Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary.

It included more than 5,000 women, who were given kits and asked to provide a sample.

The trial compared results of self-test kits with lab results on the same women, which showed they were accurate and just as effective as the traditional test.

The NHS in England yesterday announced it too would be taking part in pilot studies.

A separate study published in the British Medical Journal also found DIY tests were nearly as accurate as those in a clinic.

Uptake rates for cervical screening are the lowest in 21 years. Fewer than threequarters of women attended their routine smear in Scotland last year, with figures plummeting as low as 56.9 per cent among women under the age of 35 in Glasgow.

Many find it an invasive or uncomfortable procedure.

At the moment, a smear test involves testing for abnormalities in the cells on the cervix. But the test is currently being changed to check first for the HPV virus, and then following up if the virus is present.

This is currently being rolled out across the NHS, and by December 2019 all women in Britain will be able to get it.

Professor Sir Mike Richards, who is leading a review of cancer screening, told MPs that the DIY tests will follow a scheme tried in the Netherlands, where postal kits boosted uptake.

‘We may get to a different segment of the population by offering HPV self-sampling sets through the post,’ he told the Commons public accounts committee.

Home testing has been made possible by the creation of a more sensitive cervical test, which uses a swab to test for the HPV virus.

Health officials said the self-sample pilot schemes are likely to involve women who have missed screening, with a kit sent to them within a month of a failure to respond to an appointment.

Women who had missed appointments were twice as likely to provide a sample for testing as they were to respond to reminders to come to a clinic, Belgian research found.

Around 3,200 British women are diagnosed with cervical cancer every year and 1,000 die with the disease annually – but rates are projected to rise by nearly 40 per cent in the next 20 years.

Experts say another 2,000 women would die every year without the screening programme.

Charities said the self-sampling could benefit women who are too embarrassed to go for tests and benefit those with a disability and survivors of sexual violence.

Robert Music, chief executive of Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust, said: ‘We believe this could be a game-changer. It is now crucial that this pilot moves forward quickly to ensure we are not left behind in our vision of eliminating cervical cancer.’

‘Invasive and uncomfortable’