POORER women are more likely to have abnormal smear test results than those who are better off, new figures reveal.

A LEADING health charity has called for a national screening programme for one of the most common sexually transmitted infections after discovering that one in five young people attending one of its clinics had the fertility-threatening bug.

FEARS that the outsourcing of cervical smear tests for analysis in the United States may have caused some abnormal tests to slip through the net were dismissed yesterday by the Health Service Executive (HSE).

Doctors are being forced to make judgment calls on cervical smear tests analysed in the US putting thousands of women at risk, a leading health lobby warned today.

THERE has been a significant increase in the number of detected cases of the sexually transmitted infection, Chlamydia, in recent months, according to the Well Woman Centre.

A co-ordinated national sexual health strategy is now essential to promote safer sexual health practices and achieve early disease detection, according to the Well Woman Centre.

The Well Woman Centre has called on Minister for Health Mary Harney to take immediate action to prevent what the organisation has called ‘rogue pregnancy counselling services’ from operating in the State.

Dan Buckley