NHS in the South West supporting strategy to eliminate cervical cancer by 2040
The NHS in the South West is working to increase uptake in the HPV vaccine and cervical screening.
The NHS in the South West is aiming to increase the number of people getting their HPV vaccines and cervical screenings.
It’s in line with the national cervical cancer elimination strategy for England.
Each year around 2,700 people are diagnosed with cervical cancer in England, with proportionally more people being diagnosed in the South West when compared to the national rate.
Both the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination and cervical screening are vital tools to lowering the number of people diagnosed with cervical cancer.
The NHS say eliminating cervical cancer in the South West, and nationally, is an achievable goal with 99.8% of cervical cancer cases being preventable.
The strategy for the NHS aligns with the wider World Health Organisation (WHO) global initiative to achieve a below 4 in 100,000 incidence rate for cervical cancer.
Currently, the South West has an incident rate of 9.8 per 100,000 cases, which is slightly higher than the national rate of 9.4 per 100,000.
To work towards the elimination of cervical cancer, the NHS in the South West has outlined three goals to achieve over the next 5 years:
- Increase HPV vaccination rates to at least 90% for boys and girls
- Halt the decline in cervical screening rates and increase the screening rate to at least 70% in the 25-49 cohort
- Ensure at least 90% of women diagnosed with cervical disease receive treatment
It’s as women and people with a cervix are being encouraged to book and attend their cervical screening appointments when invited by the NHS, this Cervical Screening Awareness Week (19-25 June).
Samantha Richards, who works at Maggies, a cancer care unit in Cheltenham, tells us why it’s so important to get screened: “if we can pick people up in a smear test, that we know things are changed and that there’s evidence of HPV or pre-cancerous cells.
“Then that procedure and those treatments are far simpler and far simpler for the person.
“And then we stop people from going on to develop cancer potentially.”