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Screen saver: How new cervical screening tests look for HPV
Ahead of international HPV Awareness Day on March 4, we look at the impact of the new cervical screening test for the virus
Picture: iStock
Helen O’Callaghan
The new HPV cervical screening was due to start last March. Covid hit and it was put on pause until early July when CervicalCheck resumed screening. “Covid affected everything. We were cautious about sending out lots of screening invitations that might be ignored,” says Dr John Price, colposcopy adviser with CervicalCheck.
By end of 2020, CervicalCheck had caught up with screening invites – in a typical year, they send out 270,000 and get an 80% response. “We got 20% below that due to Covid, which we expected,” says Dr Price. In the 2020 Covid period (March-December) 117,000 HPV screening tests were carried out in primary care.
If ever a story provided a strange snapshot of the Gubu Ireland before referenda and social change brought us kicking and screaming into the modern world, it is surely that of Dr Andrew Rynne. In the 70s, the media cast the pioneering vasectomy doctor as a kind of medical renegade, as he helped scores of Irish men avoid endless fatherhood. He prescribed the contraceptive pill to women before it was legal in Ireland. A priest called to his house and urged him to stop his work with vasectomies. His own father sought to have him excommunicated from the Catholic Church. Any interference with the Irish tendency to large families was considered borderline heretical.
The Government is backing plans to introduce free contraception to women and girls aged between 17 and 25 ahead of the wider roll-out of a State-funded universal contraceptive scheme.
A Green Party motion to allow young women and girls to access free contraception was backed by the Coalition in the Seanad yesterday.
Junior health minister Frank Feighan said in focusing on those aged 17 to 25 the Government was prioritising “that cohort of people who are most at risk for crisis pregnancy and are more likely to find cost a barrier to contraception”.
Mr Feighan said the Government and Health Minister Stephen Donnelly will consider a timeline for the roll-out of a “universal State-funded contraceptive scheme alongside the work that will be undertaken to develop and finalise the policy approach in respect of the 17-25 age group”.
Government to look at free contraception for all women aged 17 to 25
Reporter:
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The Government is backing plans to introduce free contraception to women and girls aged between 17 and 25 ahead of the wider roll-out of a State-funded universal contraceptive scheme.
A Green Party motion to allow young women and girls to access free contraception was backed by the Coalition in the Seanad yesterday, December 15.
Junior health minister Frank Feighan said in focusing on those aged 17 to 25 the Government was prioritising “that cohort of people who are most at risk for crisis pregnancy and are more likely to find cost a barrier to contraception”.