PUBLIC Health England recently launched a huge campaign to raise awareness about the fact that take up of cervical screening is at a 20-year low.

I’m not surprised to hear it, at any one time roughly one in five women are overdue for their tests.

It’s never going to be anyone’s favourite trip out, but cervical screening takes just a few minutes and it can make the difference between life and death – or the difference between a child growing up with a mum or not.

That sounds dramatic, but I’ve seen many deaths from cancer firsthand and each one is heart-breaking.

Michele Smoker, pictured, is the advanced nurse practitioner at my surgery and she was really excited when I told her I was doing a column on cervical screening. She’s passionate about making sure as many women get tested as possible, so here’s what she had to say to anyone feeling nervous about it:

“There is absolutely nothing to be embarrassed about and I can promise you, hand on heart, that the nurse that does your test will have seen everything before a hundred times over.

“It doesn’t matter if you’ve got your granny pants on, or you’ve worn odd socks or you haven’t shaved in a while – or at all! We really don’t care.

“What we do care about is making sure that if there’s a chance you might have cervical cancer, we catch it early when we can still do something about it.”

If you’re feeling scared or uneasy, don’t just throw your reminder letter in the bin, talk to your practice nurse and they will be able to guide you through the process and move at a pace you feel comfortable with.

You can also get support from Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust, on 0808 802 8000, if you want to talk it through first, or you’re feeling anxious.

Many women delay their screening because there’s always something else on and it’ll probably never happen to them anyway.

To them I’d like to say that the NHS Cervical Screening Programme has saved an estimated 5,000 lives a year since it was established in 1988.

That’s 150,000 mothers, daughters, sisters, wives, partners, friends and grandmothers who got to carry on living their lives and being there with the people they love, because of cervical screening.

It’s got to be worth five minutes of your time.

Dr Jeff Stoker is a local GP at the Bermuda and Marlowe Practice in Basingstoke, with over 20 years’ experience in the NHS.

Useful links:

PHE Cervical Screening campaign: https://phescreening.blog.gov.uk/2018/11/30/phe-to-launch-national-cervical-screening-campaign-in-march-2019/

Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust: https://www.jostrust.org.uk/