Fewer women are taking up cervical screening although the decline in Brighton and Hove is in line with national trends.
In Brighton and Hove fewer than half the 25 to 49-year-old women called for testing are taking up the offer.
Public health consultant Morag Armer told Brighton and Hove City Council’s Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee that the city was not a statistical outlier.
At Hove Town Hall yesterday (Wednesday 20 November) Dr Armer, the NHS screening and immunisation lead for Surrey and Sussex, answered questions about the falling number of people attending screening appointments.
Cervical screening is available to the 25 to 64 age group to test for abnormal cells which could develop into cancer.
Nationally, younger women have not been responding to calls for cervical screening at the same rate as those over 50.
In Brighton and Hove, from 2010 to 2023, there has been a downward trend across all age groups although it is more pronounced among women aged 25 to 49.
In particular, fewer women in north and central Brighton are attending screening. The rate, 46.9 per cent, compares with 72 per cent in West Hove.
In 2010, 72.4 per cent of women aged 25 to 49 went for screening. This was down to 59.2 per cent in 2023.
Among the 50 to 64 age group, the downward trend was less pronounced, with a drop from 76.7 per cent in 2010 to 72.8 per cent in 2023.
In this age group, the Preston Park community had the highest attendance, but in all areas more than 65 per cent of older woman had taken up screening.
The number of young people taking up human papillomavirus (HPV) has not yet recovered to pre-covid-19 levels. The vaccination has been available to girls and boys since 2019 to prevent virus-related cancers.
Labour councillor Faiza Baghoth said that fear of pain and an unpleasant experience were reasons given for women not taking up the offer of screening.
Councillor Baghoth is a doctor and has carried out the procedure herself. She asked for details about statistics on pain for people who have attended screening and stopped and details of training.
She said: “I know that normally there would no pain and very little at all discomfort. I’m also aware that doing this, you can have pain and discomfort when there is a lack of training.”
Dr Armer said that anyone taking samples had a clinical qualification and most were practice nurses who received specialist training.
Former councillor Mo Marsh, representing the Older People’s Council, said that screening was not a pleasant process and asked about “self-sampling” after hearing about a trial conducted by King’s College London.
Dr Armer said that self-sampling kits were available in pharmacies now but they were not necessarily part of a national screening programme.
She said: “Before self-sampling is introduced, there will need to be a guidance and there will need to be a test on which kits should be used.”
Green councillor Raphael Hill raised concerns about the low take up of screening in some parts of Brighton and Hove, saying that the Sussex University campus was in the “north area” where fewer than half of those eligible had taken up screening.
Councillor Hill also asked about uptake for those transgender men and non-binary people who were eligible for cervical screening and how this was monitored.
On the university students, Councillor Hill was told that there were students who were not registered with a local GP because they had kept their home GP and were not recorded in the statistics.
The NHS has worked with the Clare Project which supports trans, non-binary, gender-variant and gender-questioning people to give advice on cervical screening.
The advice was that anyone who had changed their gender would need to ensure that their GP practice was aware so that they did not “fall out of the automated system”.
This isn’t surprising. Firstly, there are few people trained to do this properly and secondly in many surgeries they expect you to travel miles to a branch surgery. It is not something women like doing and expecting people to be humiliated and day a day off work to get it done is another barrier.
Not even a particularly accurate test, resulting in many false positives and unnecessary treatments.
They are generally quite accurate in detecting abnormal cells in the cervix that could lead to cervical cancer.
The accuracy depends on several factors, including the quality of the sample taken, the technique used, and how well the lab processes the sample. In most cases, they detect about 90-95% of cervical abnormalities, though no test is perfect.
False negatives can occur, meaning some abnormalities may not be detected, but this is relatively rare when the test is performed correctly.
Regular screening is crucial as it can detect changes before they develop into cancer, so should always be encouraged.