Goody death lead to surge in HSE screening

THE Health Service Executive (HSE) has attributed an unprecedented surge in the demand for cervical screening in 2009 to the death from cervical cancer of Big Brother star Jade Goody.

The 27-year-old mother-of-two learned she had cervical cancer in 2008 while appearing in the Indian version of Big Brother.

She died in March 2009 and by October, it was reported that the number of women aged between 25 and 64 going for smear tests in Britain had grown by 12% during the previous year.

A HSE analysis of the number of patients using colposcopy services between 2007 and 2010 also recorded a significant increase in 2009. This was partly due to greater capacity in the system following the introduction of the national cervical screening programme.

As many as 284,833 women were screened in the first year of CervicalCheck from September 1, 2008, to August 31, 2009.

It was also during this period that Goody died, leading to a waiting list for cervical screening of almost 1,500 women in summer 2009. Yesterday, in its March performance monitoring report, the HSE linked the surge in demand for screening directly to Goody’s death.

The HSE wrote: “The death of television celebrity Jade Goody during 2009 resulted in unprecedented levels of cervical screening which resulted in long waiting times and a waiting list of 1,482 women in the summer of 2009.”

Following on from screening, 28,925 appointments were generated and a surprisingly low number of women defaulted — less than 7.6% against a target of less than 15%.

On a positive note, all waiting lists had been abolished by January 2011, and the average waiting times for colposcopy had reached the target levels of less than two weeks for urgent cases, less than four weeks for women with high-grade abnormalities and less than eight weeks for women with low-grade abnormalities.

Since 2000, the treatment of women in need of surgical invention for cervical abnormalities has changed dramatically.

In 2009, 95% of treatments were performed as outpatients using general anaesthetic “representing marked improvement when compared to 2000 when 23% of treatments were performed as inpatients under general anaesthetic,” the HSE said.

Cervical cytology screening aims to reduce the incidence of and mortality from cancer of the cervix. CervicalCheck, the National Cervical Screening Programme aims to deliver regular screening to all women aged 25 to 60 years.

The use of colposcopy services, a diagnostic procedure involving examination of the cervix and surrounding tissue, has soared in the past decade, from 4,616 new attendances in 2000 to 15,759 last year while the number of treatments rose from 1,922 to 6,711.