The DIY smear test

Women who miss cancer screening at clinic to be offered home kits by post

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

Kits will be sent to women in the post, enabling them 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. The pilot scheme was announced as NhS England revealed that cervical screening administration will return ‘ inhouse’ from June.

The decision follows a series of screening blunders, including outsourcing firm capita’s failure to send invitations or test results to 50,000 patients last year.

uptake rates for cervical screening are the lowest in 21 years, with nearly a third of women ignoring their last appointment letters.

At the moment a smear test involves testing for abnormalities in the cells on the cervix.

But the test is currently being changed to test first for the hPV virus,with a follow-up examination 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 selfsample 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.

Studies have found the tests were nearly as accurate as those done in a clinic. Women who had missed screening 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 introduction of self- sampling could benefit thousands of women who are too embarrassed to go for tests as well as those with a disability and survivors of sexual violence.

Robert Music, chief executive of Jo’s cervical cancer Trust, said: ‘We have been calling for this for a long time and believe this could be a game-changer.

‘Other countries are already seeing very positive results of hPV self- sampling, with those who have delayed attending for many years choosing to take the test.

‘It is now crucial that this pilot moves forward quickly to ensure we are not left behind in our vision of eliminating cervical cancer.’