Reading Madam Miaow’s post about Jade Goody made me think about a whole complex of issues that have been brought up.
I will put aside the actual voyeuristic nature in which Jade Goody’s cancer has been reported along with this commodification of death, as other blogs have discussed it at length. But it has sparked commentary and debate about cervical cancer.
In 2003, the age for a cervical smear was raised from 20 to 25. And lately I have been reading about women who were denied smears as they were too young (one was 24 and sexually active), and both developed cervical cancer.
One woman is campaigning for a change in the law. The Dept of Health state: cervical cancer was extremely rare in under 25s while changes in the cervix were common – which could lead to misdiagnosis and more unnecessary tests.
My older sister discovered, after a routine smear test, that she had abnormal cells. She was under 25 at the time. Had the changes been around then, who knows what the prognosis would have been (fortunately they were able to treat it in time).
I had my first smear at 19 way back in 1989, my doctor was adamant I should have one, this wouldn’t happen now. I have smears every 3 years though received wisdom says between 3 to 5 years.
Yet women are still not having smears. In the North of Ireland, it has been estimated that 1 in 4 women have not had a smear in the past 5 years.
In Northern Ireland, women aged 20 to 64 years are currently invited for screening every three to five years. In 2008, only 74% of women in this age group had had a smear test in the last five years.
In Scotland the picture is: All women aged between 20 and 60 in Scotland are offered smear tests every three years but the number of women undergoing the screening has dropped from about 80% 10 years ago to 69.7% last year.
And in the UK there has been reasearch that suggests a class dynamic in regards to deprivation and cervical cancer.
But the cancer tsar expert Prof Mike Richards believes the drop in women being tested for cervical cancer isn’t to do with the raising of the screening age. The number of women tested for cervical cancer has dropped significantly over the past decade from 83% to 79%, the biggest drop is between the 25-29 age range. The national statistics show that around 22 women under the age of 25 have died of cervical cancer since the raising of the age in 2003.
But the raising of the age of 25 seems to be nothing more than a cost cutting exercise where NL are playing Russian roulette with women’s lives.
But there has been an increase in women demanding smears due to the ‘Goody effect’. If the sensationalist media coverage has made women more consciously aware about the necessity of smear tests and the importance of their health then something positive has come out of this tragic affair. Though, obviously, more has to be done to raise awareness about the need for young women to get access and to lower the age for smear testing.
And surely the importance of educating young women about smears is getting them into a routine of being tested every three years?
