Health Minister Jonathan Coleman said the new Time to Screen website and Facebook campaign aims to help remove some of the barriers to screening through using a new mobile-friendly website and social marketing campaign to offer support to women and answer questions.
“With more than two million New Zealanders using Facebook on a daily basis, the campaign will enable us to reach more women who are not being screened or who don’t get screened as often as they should,” said Coleman. The campaign is aimed particularly at boosting screening participation by Māori, Pacific and Asian woman.
Time to Screen builds on pre-existing initiatives to offer practical support to women, including transporting and accompanying women to screening appointments.
Women aged 20 to 70 should have a cervical smear test every three years. Since the National Cervical Screening Programme was established in 1990, the incidence of cervical cancer and deaths has more than halved.
Women between 45 and 69 should have a mammogram every two years. The rate of death from breast cancer has reduced by a third for women who have been screened as part of the programme.
More information about the women’s health screening programmes is available at www.timetoscreen.nz.
The new website has no information about the rates of Ca cervix in NZ or the risk factors.Ca cervix is the 12th most common cancer for women in NZ.In 2014 there were 142 registrations, which is an age standardised rate of 4.6/ 100 000 women for non Maori and 11.5/ 100 000 for Maori.There are approximately 3.2 million females in NZ of which 1.2 million are on the NCSP register. The NSU try to tell, even their own health professionals, that Ca cervix is the fourth most common cancer in women. They love to use worldwide statistics. The other information that is withheld by the screening programme is the harm caused by the overtreatment of CIN2/3 in young women. Women have been routinely screened from the age of 20 in NZ in spite of the international evidence. This will change in 2018. LLETZ procedures can lead to premature babies, increased rates of C section,etc. Non of this is ever mentioned to the poor women who front up for the humiliation of a smear test.
Overdiagnosis following mammography screening is finally being mentioned in the breast screening leaflet. Many intelligent women are doing their own research and walking away from the screening programmes. “Time to screen”, time to tell the truth I feel.The general public are fast loosing trust in health professionals because the MOH are pulling your strings.