Clinical modelling predicts the self-swab will prevent around 400 additional cervical cancers over 17 years, and will save around 138 additional lives.
The upcoming changes will be rolled out from 2023 - but women s health expert Professor Bev Lawton from Victoria University says a solution must be implemented in the interim. This is really good news. We ve got to wait two years, which is unfortunate. I think in the meantime, we need to have some form of interim solution for those women who are under-screened - or never screened. And everyone has to keep getting their smears while we wait for the programme. Two years is a long time, she said.
Health workers at the frontline of fighting high rates of cervical cancer among Māori women say a new, easier, test is promising but it isn t a one-stop fix.
Nurse Frances Whaanga-Tuhi (left) and community health worker Diane Chapman hope self swab tests for cervical cancer will remove the barriers for some Māori women to getting the test.
Photo: SUPPLIED
The government is to change its cervical cancer screening programme in 2023 to a vaginal swab for the HPV virus which causes 99 percent of cervical cancers.
Women could choose to do it themselves, and it would replace the current pap smear screening which needed a doctor or nurse to use a speculum and tiny brush to take cells from the cervix.
Labour MP Kiri Allan s cancer battle: Advocates push for HPV self-testing to save lives
6 Apr, 2021 08:52 PM
5 minutes to read
Labour MP Kiri Allan has been diagnosed with stage three cervical cancer. PM Jacinda Ardern answered questions from the media on Tuesday morning. Video / Mark Mitchell
Labour MP Kiri Allan has been diagnosed with stage three cervical cancer. PM Jacinda Ardern answered questions from the media on Tuesday morning. Video / Mark Mitchell
RNZ
Cabinet Minister Kiri Allan s shock cancer diagnosis has highlighted the need for Māori women to get a cervical smear, which could save their life and reverse the shocking statistics.
HPV self-testing was shown to be as effective as clinician testing in 2019, and has already been made available in Australia and the Netherlands, while the NHS began a pilot of 31,000 women in the UK in February this year. But calls for it to be introduced in New Zealand have so far been unsuccessful, despite support from the ministry of health.
The same goes for amending testing pathways to look first for the presence of the HPV virus, which modelling has shown to reduce deaths by 15% compared with cytology (âsmearâ) screening, and has been adopted as standard in the UK, Australia, the Netherlands and Sweden.