Screening levels for cervical cancer across Munster fail to reach  national target

Some 87% of women aged between 25 and 29 attended screening. Women in their 40s also attended in high numbers with 83% of women aged 45 to 49 attending.

Screening levels for cervical cancer across all Munster counties are lower than the national target of 80%.

Cork has the highest level of uptake in Munster and comes in at just 68%, the first CervicalCheck report since before the pandemic shows.

Around the country, younger women were the most likely to go for screening, data from five years up to March 2022 indicates.

Uptake among all women aged 25 to 65 shows a county-by-county range from 60% to 75%.

Clare was the lowest in the south at 63%, with Kerry and Limerick at 65%. The uptake among women in Tipperary and Waterford stood at 66% during that time.

On a national level, Carlow saw the highest uptake at 75% while Laois had the lowest at 60%.

CervicalCheck said one factor in the low figures was the extension of the upper age limit from 60 to 65 years of age in 2020 which will take time to show effects.

Some 87% of women aged between 25 and 29 attended screening. Women in their 40s also attended in high numbers with 83% of women aged 45 to 49 attending.

However, this dropped lower to 66% for women in their late 50s. Up to that point, 26% of women aged 60 to 65 had attended screening.

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The report also shows how returning results to women was affected by the covid-19 pandemic, the cyberattack on the HSE, the switch from cytology screening to using the HPV test, and other factors.

Between 2020 to 2021, just 63% of women received their results letter from CervicalCheck within the target time of four weeks. This fell to 61% by 2022.

This was linked to delays in laboratories and spikes in attendance, first following the controversy over screening highlighted by Vicky Phelan and then in the aftermath of the pandemic.

“By the end of 2021, we had screened the same number of women in the two-year period of the pandemic as in any other two-year period,” the report said.

Clinical director Professor Nóirín Russell said: “I look forward to working collaboratively to achieve Ireland’s commitment to the WHO cervical cancer elimination goal to make cervical cancer rare by 2040.” 

She praised everyone involved, including women who came for screening “when the programme was under public scrutiny and pressure from a global pandemic”.