To ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will make a statement on cervical cancer screening in the NHS.
In 2003–04, 81 per cent. of eligible women in England had a cervical screening test result at least once in the last five years 1 . 3.6 million women were screened 2 and laboratories reported four million tests. 128,000 women were referred following abnormal results.
Following an appraisal by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) in 2003, the cervical screening programme in England is currently being modernised with the introduction of liquid based cytology (LBC). LBC techniques offer a new way to prepare screening test samples for examination in the laboratory. NICE concluded LBC will reduce the number of unsatisfactory tests and improve the speed with which slides can be read. Due to a large retraining programme, full implementation is expected by 2008.
The Government are also committed to speeding up the results of cervical screening, and officials are working on the best way of taking this forward.
References:
1 Department of Health Statistical Bulletin, Cervical Screening Programme, England: 2002–03 2 Department of Health Statistical Bulletin, Cervical Screening Programme, England: 2002–03
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No1 person thinks not
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