The goal is to get as many women as possible to submit a cell sample in order to detect cell changes and prevent cervical cancer. The self-test for gynecological cell sampling will be offered to women who have been absent from cell sample checks for more than six years.
- Unfortunately, in the group of women who have been missing for many years, there are women with severe cell changes. The women may only come to health care when they have symptoms and it is much better to find the changes long before. Therefore, we will offer a self-test for HVP, Human Papillom Virus, which is the virus that can cause cell changes, says Bodil Ehn, who is a maternal health care consultant.
The self-test will be sent to approximately 900 women in Blekinge. From the healthcare system, it is hoped that as many as possible of the recipients will do the test and send back the answer.
Is the self-test as safe as if an midwife does the test?
- It's just as safe. If the test shows that you have HPV, we ask the woman to come to the gynecology and take a test on the occurrence of HPV and cell changes, says Bodil Ehn.
"Constantly working"She says that even earlier, several measures have been taken to increase the proportion of women who come to cell test controls.
- We have tried in other ways to get more women to come to cell sampling and we are constantly working for it. You have free sampling at all our six women's health clinics and you can easily book on and off via the web. But there are still some that do not come for different reasons, she says.
Sending self-test for gynecological cell sampling has already been introduced in several regions of the country.
See more about the importance of testing for HPV in the clip above.