Cervical screening: Do-it-yourself testing proves a game changer for Waikato women

The Cervical Screening Support to Services outreach team Tracey Bates (from left), Selena Batt, Simone Schuil, Sapphire Barron and Taryn Gillespie.

When women get together and the subject turns to health, chances are one of the things they mention is how they hate going to the doctor for cervical screening.

Some are so embarrassed by the prospect, they refuse their screening - many have never bothered to go at all.

But since September last year, Te Whatu Ora’s National Cervical Screening Programme has had Human Papillomavirus (HPV) self-testing available and it has been a game changer, said Pinnacle Support to Screening mobile outreach nurse Tracey Bates.

“When I do in-home visits and explain how easy the new test is to do, it overcomes barriers to screening, particularly for any woman who has been reluctant in the past,” she said.

“We consistently see women who have refused screening but are then happy to do it themselves in the comfort of their own home.”

In the past year, Pinnacle outreach mobile nurses have screened 776 hard-to-reach priority group women in the Waikato. They have all been referred to the service by GPs at Pinnacle practices throughout the Waikato and King Country.

The focus has been on Māori and Pacific communities and disengaged women.

“There is no doubt screening saves lives but for some women, the previous standard speculum examination was embarrassing, painful, etc, which prevented them from having it done,” said Bates.

“We have been able to successfully screen women who are 20-30 years overdue or have never been screened before.”

Many women aren’t aware of the new self-sampling HPV screening method, so by working with practices, Pinnacle’s mobile health nurses receive referrals and visit wāhine at their whare, outreach clinics or at the medical centre.

The self-sampling kit includes a long cotton-like bud that women insert vaginally to take their own sample. The test, which takes about 20 seconds, checks for the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) which causes more than 95% of cervical cancers.

The test can be done even if a woman is pregnant or has her period.

“The test is certainly a game changer - it is quick and easy, and saves lives,” said Bates.

Pinnacle Midlands Health Network is a not-for-profit primary health organisation which manages the healthcare of nearly half a million people enrolled with 84 practices in Tairāwhiti, Taranaki, Rotorua, Taupō-Tūrangi, Thames-Coromandel, King Country and Waikato.